it is not even half as deep as diablo. however, it has some good arcade mechanics and level design to compensate. the loot is simpler than diablo, but the drop rate is good -- you get the rare orange unique or blue mixed in with the crap drops, and you can quickly scrap bad drops for "gold" (called resource points). unlike CRAPIONS OF NORCRAP, the uniques are super powerful -- like obscenely so, i found a combat staff that did 47-88 damage base on the second level of the first area, where most staves were 3-9 damage, lol -- BUT they usually require very specific skill minimums, giving you something to work towards.
(i need to write up my full-on retro review of CRAPIONS OF NORCRAP, by the by; talk about a totally f'ed up diablo clone!)
alien syndrome's big weaknesses are the nub controls for run-and-gun, and the lack of class diversity. some folks might find the art direction a bit generic, too, but as abrader says, it gets more interesting and ambitious as the levels progress. the loot tables aren't as expansive as diablo's, but they are better than, say CRAPIONS OF NORCRAP, and they have immediately useful effects, and the drop rate is great. best of all, drops are either crap or OMG AWESOME; the crafting system is used to keep you in the middling blue-level kit, which keeps you from monkeying about in the inventory system ad nauseum. it's actually a pretty cunning balance -- crafting lets you make sure that you always have good kit and can survive an area, and the drops are either for immediately useful items (health, energy), implants (charms, lol), scrap for money, special blueprints for superkit, and UBER drops. there's a few small lessons for action-roguelike devs here.
crafting is also nicely done. you have a little robot buddy, who is amazingly unobtrusive and has surprisingly good AI, and who functions as your superlackey -- he heals, recharges weapons, makes ammo, and serves as your crafting store. he even has upgrades to his own weaponry, healing/recharge functions, and fire rate, making him into a pretty useful OPTION-like firepower/support boost. you can buy healing/recharge items from him, but only in limited amounts per time period. he rocks.
it's a good game. it really needs to be on better hardware -- PC, L-O-L -- and it needs stronger art direction, but it does a good job taking 1980s maze shooter gameplay and strapping 2000-era hack-and-slash lootfest mechanics on it. i'd give it a 7/10.
