Alias

The damning stigma once attached to movie-licensed games has finally begun to fade. Enter the Matrix notwithstanding, the dour days of Hudson Hawk and Total Recall are no more—top-quality hits such as Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King prove filmic thrills can translate into good gameplay. Sadly, the same turnaround has yet to bless games based on cinema's tacky younger brother, television. Even the most ardent fans would be hard-pressed to suffer through a TV-based title: X-Files and Star Trek aficionados could tell you countless stories of loss and disappointment. Not deterred by this legacy of failure, Acclaim bravely presents its foray into boob-tube gaming, Alias.

Alias centers on the wildly complex adventures of Sydney Bristow, a stunning superspy bent on unraveling a colossal conspiracy to utilize ancient technology for world domination. Oh, and her father is her boss, her partner is her boyfriend, her roommate was an evil clone, and she was brainwashed for two years. Actually, that's one of the game's first stumbling blocks: If you're not already an avid fan of the guilty-pleasure TV drama, you'll be baffled here. Honestly, the narrative will fail to inspire nonfans, as it is largely a watered-down rehash of last season's events devoid of context.

So, assuming you are already an Alias fan, is this worth your time (and money)? Well, the trappings are certainly nice—Bristow's in-game avatar shimmies and shimmers in all the right places, the massive environments teem with detail, and many levels do seem like plausible bits from the show. It helps that Acclaim snagged nearly the entire cast from the show to do voicework, as well as its composer: If anything, this game sounds precisely like Alias.

Looking and sounding like the show isn't really enough, though. Alias also needs to offer thrilling gameplay…and, well, it doesn't. Each level follows a similar premise: Bristow wears a disguise to infiltrate some foreign locale, performs various bits of reconnaissance using clever op-tech doohickeys, and stealthily avoids combat. The skimpy disguises work fine, but missions fall apart when it comes time to do some spying. Poorly cued, confusing objectives pepper the levels. For example, you'll be told to "destroy the security system" or "locate the morgue" without being told what the security system looks like or where the morgue is. An unreliable map system and a vaguely Crazy Taxi-esque guidance arrow are supposed to assist with these design snafus, but don't expect them to always work.

While obtuse level design hampers Alias, an utterly busted fighting engine nearly destroys it. Simply put, both hand-to-hand and weapons combat are wretched: Bristow's kung fu is a mashy, misguided guessing game, and ammo-deprived guns offer little help. And since stealth rarely works (since you have no indication of whether or not guards can see you), you'll be clumsily kicking and punching a lot.

In the end, Alias deserves credit for capturing the show's audiovisual vibe—diehard fans will be able to derive some pleasure from it. As a game, however, its quality ranks between VIP for PlayStation and ALF for Sega Master System, which is to say, it's not that great.

Copyright © 2004 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Xbox Nation.