The epic adventure of five incredibly stupid aliens! - Review By Celeryface - Page 1/2
Being a huge fan of "point and click" adventures, or as I like to call it them "graphic adventures", I jumped at the opportunity to review Stupid Invaders. The graphic adventure genre has been pretty dormant for the past few years, and as such, it is always a treat when there is a new release in the genre. Graphic adventure games were made popular from hit Lucasarts PC titles like Day of the Tentacle, the Monkey Island series, and Sam and Max - Hit The Road and the famed Sierra series King's Quest.
Published by Ubi Soft, best known for their multi-platformer Rayman, and developed by Xilam, Stupid Invaders is a direct port of the PC version that was released back in February 2001. Spanning across 2 GD-Roms, you control five "stupid" aliens through three chapters of solving puzzles, interacting with over 40 different characters, and exploring 120 unique locations. Candy, Etno, Stereo, Gorgious, and my favorite, Bud is our team alien heroes in the game. The evil Dr. Sakarin has sent his hitman after our five alien friends, and to save them you must solve puzzles with objects that you collect throughout the game, meet up with other characters, and take on their greatest enemy yet, their own stupidity.
The Good
The sports a very "cartoony" look that is quite appealing. |
Right away you will notice the gorgeous graphics in Stupid Invaders. Sported within are great colorful backgrounds and that wonderful "cartoony" look that we all enjoy (Well most of us, anyway). The characters and environments are rendered very nicely. To give you an idea of the look of the game, just imagine the color scheme and wacky rendering techniques found in the classic PC game Day of the Tentacle. The animation looks great, except for some missing frames in some of the CG sequences. Used to tell most of the story, the CG sequences do a great job of progressing the story and play a huge roll in the game. And besides, watching the CG sequences is a lot of fun. They are very high quality, and are so well done, that Ubi Soft could have taken this game and made an entire cartoon out of it. Some may argue that Ubi Soft should have just done that instead, but keep reading for more on that issue.
Having a great storyline in an adventure is a must, whether it is in film, a television show, or a videogame. Without an interesting storyline, all the technical bells and whistles will eventually lose their grip on the player and the game itself will have failed. But Ubi Soft has a nice simple storyline for Stupid Invaders, with some great suggestive humor that will have you falling out of your chair throughout the course of the game. Even though its a "cartoon-styled" game, Stupid Invaders isn't for the kiddies, as it has some mild language and "suggestive themes." Rather than give any hints though, I let you check it out for yourself... I don't want to spoil it for you. So the Teen (13+) rating is here for a reason, but don't worry too, too much parents. What's in this game is nothing worse than what you'll see and hear on The Simpsons.
The game sports an intuitive control scheme, with a simple button layout on the standard Dreamcast controller. As an added bonus, Stupid Invaders supports the Dreamcast mouse. This makes the game play more like its PC counterparts and is definitely the best way to enjoy the game. But those without a mouse needn't worry too much. You'll be able to play just fine without it.
The sound in Stupid Invaders is very well done. The sound effects fit in perfectly with the objects and the music does a great job setting the mood for the environments. The best part about the game's soundtrack is the great voice talent casted for the characters. Ubi Soft went out and got some great voice actors for the game, which you will probably recognize from your Saturday morning cartoons. The voice actors give life to each character, and I as I stated earlier, the production for this game is at a very high quality and could have been made into a cartoon.
The Bad
Is that his tongue? |
Now its time for the bad stuff... One of my main complaints is that the puzzles can either be very easy or very hard. There were only two puzzles that were a real challenge, so as you can probably understand, most of them were fairly easy. Not providing much of a challenge, I completed the entire game in about 5 hours. Seeing that Stupid Invaders is on 2 discs, I was expecting a longer adventure, but even though there was the lack of challenge, I was still pleased with what I got from the game in the end. So its wasn't all that bad.
To add to the challenge factor (or lack there of), the inventory system contains six spaces to store the items that you pick up throughout the game. Usually you will only have maximum three items in your inventory, and again, this makes the puzzles very easy to solve. Most of the puzzles are just trial and error, and are very easy with only having two or three items in your inventory.
Next: More Bad and The Final Word
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