Review
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With all the talk of adventure games being a dying
genre, it's worth noting that several titles have been released
recently, and more are in the works. While the titles aren't as
prolific as in years past, gamers have still seen the release of
such excellent works as Escape From Monkey Island and The Longest
Journey. Unfortunately, Xilam and Ubi Soft have decided to add
Stupid Invaders to the list of titles in the shrinking genre, so
perhaps death isn't such a bad choice after all.Years ago, five
aliens c-landed on Earth. Etno, Candy, Bud, Stereo and
Gorgious hid in a deserted house until the spacecraft was
repaired, and finally that time has come. The player's job is to
guide the five until they can return to their home planet while
trying to evade the evil Dr. Sakarine and his hitman. Stupid
Invaders is a traditional adventure game, with puzzles of the
"use X on Y" variety that adventure gamers are familiar with, and
the interface -- a hand that changes to show what is possible
with an object -- is easy to understand. The bottom of the screen
also explains what something is and whether the alien can
interact with it, but is occasionally inconsistent, especially
when indicating movement. Most of the time it would show "Go
here" or "This way" or such when it was possible to change
screens, but sometimes the words weren't there and other times
clicking them did nothing. The only way to get the alien to go to
that side of the screen was to walk it until it moved close
enough to "catch" the words.
The graphics are absolutely stunning. Colorful and quirky, the
game looks better than most Saturday morning cartoon series. The
integrated cinematics alone are almost worth the price of the
game, and each of the more than 500 game screens is perfect in
style. To complement the graphics, the music and sound effects
add ambience fitting to the area. In a laboratory, the music is
reminiscent of a 1950s science fiction movie, while an elevator
has, appropriately enough, elevator music. The voice acting is
also top-notch, a difficult feat in gaming made more so by the
dim-witted nature of the aliens and by dialog of such caliber as,
"Your butthole is going to take me back to my planet."
The humor in the game is hit or miss, either laugh-out-loud funny
or grimacingly bad. In fact, some of the jokes would probably
make Beavis and Butthead cringe in disgust, and one, an implied
rape, is disturbing. As a general rule of thumb, players who
think the funniest thing Jim Carrey has ever done is his
butt-talking routine will likely find Stupid Invaders right up
their alley.
At the heart of any adventure title is its puzzles, and Stupid
Invaders does the job sufficiently most of the time. Some of the
puzzles are very easy to solve, especially for anyone even
remotely familiar with the genre. Others require some thought,
and those are the most enjoyable. Too bad so many of the puzzles
require random guessing and pixel-hunting, taking the fun out of
solving them. Even worse, and by far the most annoying aspect of
the entire game, is that many actions will kill the alien and end
the game. That's right, an adventure game that kills, although in
quite amusing ways. Most of the time it's impossible to know that
a particular action will end the game until it's too late, so
excessive use of saving is actually necessary to keep from
repeating sections. This fear of death definitely cuts down on
the exploration and "try anything" approach to adventure gaming
that most players are familiar with. It's almost as if the
developers wanted to punish players for playing their game. This
is the primary reason that Stupid Invaders gets a Miss instead of
a Hit.
Some small problems contribute to this lackluster title.
Reloading and saving are done with the F1 and F2 keys
respectively. Players who jump right into the game without
reading the manual may not learn this until it's too late.
Towards the end, the game ced to the desktop several times,
but never in the same spot twice. Some of the characters the
aliens can interact with have dialog options to choose from, but
after going through all the options once, if players accidentally
click on the character again, they have to go through every one
of the options again. Finally, for a four-CD game, it's too
short. It's possible to finish the game in fewer than 15 hours.
Overall, Stupid Invaders is an adventure title that just isn't as
much fun as it should be. But it's plenty stupid. -- DailyRadar
Review
