Alien 3 is a run and gun game that plays like Alien Syndrome, the game was released on multiple consoles - fair - it is not an "underrated Genesis" game, but rather an underrated game initially released on Amiga and Sega Genesis, later ported to other systems, the Genesis version is the best version of this Probe Software original, usually known for their port of Mortal Kombat and many other arcade games such as Super Smash TV on the Mega Drive. The game has a European feel to it, mainly for its emphasis on collecting items and non-linear level design, you are on a timer to rescue each "prisoner" and find the escape route, equipped with a machine gun and a radar to detect surrounding aliens, many other weapons can be found throughout each level, such as grenades, a rocket launcher or a fire thrower. The game features no bosses, rather a collection of challenging levels up to the very end, ending with a credit sequence thanking you for playing the game - so very European.

Perhaps understandably, this adaptation isn't faithful at all to the movie it's based on, but I can still draw a parallel: like the dog-xenomorph in the Alien 3 movie, this game is an unholy amalgamation of fast-paced action and unsettling horror. Unfortunately, its disparate elements don't work well together.

I get some 'early survival-horror' vibes from this: the fact that you can only stand in place while shooting, the fall damage, and the massive amount of recoil and stun you receive on getting hit emphasizes your fragility. There's also a slight resource management aspect, with your rifle and flamethrower running out of ammo pretty easily meaning that you need to pick suitable situations to use your powerful but slow grenades. The cutscenes of the aliens bursting out of the chests of the prisoners you fail to rescue is about as horrifying as can be expected from Genesis hardware. And while this is purely accidental, the way the screen scrolls slightly behind your running adds a sense of uncertainty of what lies ahead.

Unfortunately, the addition of the timer throws everything out of balance. Cruelly unforgiving even on the easiest difficulty setting, it means that the only way you can make progress is to memorize the locations of all the prisoners in every stage, as well as the location of every alien (since the slow scrolling means that virtually every alien is a 'gotcha' moment). The removal of the timer and additional mechanics to evade the xenomorphs would have turned this into a fantastic proto-survival-horror game, while making rescuing every prisoner a 'bragging rights' reward rather than mandatory for progress would have made this a passable action game. As it is, it's neither.

It does get an extra half-star for an easily-accessible level select code which is the only reason I was able to complete the game!