Alien Syndrome for PSP Review

A pleasant PSP title with decent controls, for a change

Alien Syndrome PSP is one of the better titles for the platform, but only if you don't mind a game with a bit of tedium and repetitiveness.

I was expecting something like the remake on the Sega Arcade Classics disc for the PS2 (an excellent game in its own right) but this is a totally new game with only a few tie-ins with the original arcade version. You only see the worm creatures a few times, for example; most of the aliens and weapons are entirely new designs.

It strongly reminds me of Diablo in terms of overall design, though more complex and a lot more interesting. Gameplay is fast, smooth, and reasonably fun. Levels load quickly and it doesn't suffer from the typical PSP control issues.

I found the background story rather predictable, and much of the voice acting is not up to par--some places it's quite good, others it's laughably awful. And many times the dialog gets chopped off early, which just adds to the silliness. (The movies can be turned off, though.)

The first time I played it took me about 12 hours to finish, but I was exploring every area and taking lots of time to earn EXP. In most areas the monsters will only respawn a certain number of times so it's possible to clean out every area, but it's usually not necessary to do so to get through the level. I'd say an average player will need 4-5 hours.to get through all the levels.

Hard and Expert levels are challenging and I think it has a lot of replay value. You can create multiple starting characters and build them up, or just focus on maxing out one character. And levels and characters are loaded separately; the loaded level's difficulty and your character's abilities/equipment come from the loaded character. A very nice feature.

Recommended? While I've found there's enough variety to hold my interest for multiple plays, the game was meant to feel like "Is this ever going to end?" Some gamers will find that appealing, others will want something which plays more quickly and with more variety.
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Source / Author / Credit: Anonymous