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Everything you wanted to know about Alien Syndrome PSP (part 2)

Solving endemic RPG problems, green-conscious robots and cramming it all into a UMD

Everything you wanted to know about Alien Syndrome PSP (part 2)

Our trawl through the Alien Syndrome development blogs of Totally Games' senior designer, Jeff Kung, continues. Yesterday we looked mostly at the game's content, balance and control issues. We did touch upon the developer's intentions for the title, but only briefly, so that seemed like a good starting point for today's concluding article.

"When we approached Sega with one of their back catalogue titles, Alien Syndrome, and told them that we wanted to make a totally new game based on that franchise for the PSP and Wii, Sega was all for it," exclaims Kung, who goes on to explain that while initial pre-production targets were met, it wasn't entirely straightforward.

The difficulty came from the developer's desire to include large levels enabling gamers to play for as long or as short as they wished, yet maintaining a balance between the RPG and action elements at all times.

"For the PSP, we designed the game with every intention of making it a full-scale action RPG with hundreds of items, weapons, monsters, and tons of action," says Kung. "We created five very different classes, each with its own weapon advancement tree and specialty proficiencies to spec into.

"It was a huge challenge to fit this big of a game into the PSP. But we managed to do it and not lose any of the scope of the original design. […] We actually had time to implement almost every key feature we spec'd out in pre-production."

Avoiding the typical feature-cutting process many games suffer throughout the development cycle almost entirely is something the team is understandably very proud of.

Yet the biggest challenge lay in how to implement new concepts into the existing RPG genre. The developer eventually found subtle ways to replace age-old ways of structuring RPGs.

"One of them was the use of the SCARAB (Sentient Combat and Recycling Assembly Bot)," Kung reveals. "In space, there are no towns or vendors to occasionally stop into on your journeys. Instead of having towns to buy and sell items from, the player has a little robot companion that follows her wherever she goes.

"When the player picks up items she doesn't want, she can recycle the item back for energy resource units. These units can later be used to molecularly fabricate items, provided the SCARAB has a particular item's molecular blueprint to do so. In essence, the SCARAB is a travelling vendor that the player can access at any time in her adventures."

One particular genre staple the developer was keen to overhaul concerns the weapons; specifically, the effectiveness of melee weapons. "We have a class that uses primarily the melee staff weapon and it's on par with the effectiveness of all the other ranged weapons. Many of us here at Totally Games have a pet peeve about unbalanced weapon usage in RPGs, especially action RPGs," admits Kung, before boasting that the melee and ranged weapon balance in Alien Syndrome is "fantastic".

Talking about the melee system first, the senior designer, detailed the combo system which rewards players with increasing damage potential as combo chains are successfully linked together. Combos are unlocked as the character levels up, yet the team was keen to empower and encourage the melee-focused gamer as early as possible. So from the start, players have access to a finishing move that both kills adversaries and feeds back health, thereby rewarding gamers for engaging in hand-to-hand combat.

As for the ranged weapons, Kung explains they're not only balanced with regards to the melee offerings, but also amongst themselves. "For example, the fire [weapon advancement] tree is all about flaming goodness, damage over time, and killing multiple enemies at once," he says. "Its downfall [is] it consumes a lot of ammo."

Regardless of the progress of the evolution and each weapon's pros and cons, the one thing all the weapon advancement trees share is what Kung terms "their special FX".

"We put in a lot of time and effort in designing and making FX that pop and reward the player with beautiful art," he explains. "And the great thing is, each player character can spec into a couple of different weapons trees, so the variety in any one given playthrough is phenomenal."

Which obviously sounds like fun and is just another reason why we continue to look forward to Alien Syndrome. Keep checking your motion sensors for any sign of our review of the game (which is released in the UK in early September) – it should show up very, very soon.

Joao Diniz Sanches
Joao Diniz Sanches
With three boys under the age of 10, former Edge editor Joao has given up his dream of making it to F1 and instead spends his time being shot at with Nerf darts. When in work mode, he looks after editorial projects associated with the Pocket Gamer and Steel Media brands.