Whether you are a casual gamers who’s been playing games for a year or two, or a hardcore gamer since Quake, you should know then not to expect much from a movie-licensed games. Yes, there are some exceptions (very, very few exceptions) but in general, it’s like the game is crippled to begin with when editors review the movie-licensed games. Not fair, but many of us just assume that it’s a bad game.
So even before we start playing Alien in the Attic for DS, we didn’t expect much. Actually, we didn’t expect anything to happen. Just another bad movie-licensed game we guessed. And as we were playing the game, nothing really different or awesome was happening. We dropped the game about couple tries, then decided to finish it later.
But on the next day, we noticed that our editors actually wanted to continue the game. And again on next day, so on. Since everybody expected it to be a bad game, I guess we really didn’t put more attention into the game. The gameplay, style and cliché-but-still-funny dialogs between characters were all there to be enjoyed. We still could find flaws, but nothing compared to the real bad movie-licensed titles out there.
Aliens in the Attic is a simple side scrolling platformer with 3D graphics. You can switch the characters in real-time to fight the boss or solve the puzzle. There are three characters; Hannah, Tom and Jake. Each of them have different weapons or/and different abilities to choose from, and many times the player doesn’t even have to pick a certain character to enjoy the game throughout the play. Hannah doesn’t have any weapons, but she can either jump twice to reach higher or small enough to access the special area of the level, so other than those occasions you would use Tom or Jake. And interestingly enough, it is well balanced between two characters, and many times you’re free to pick your play style. Addition to that freedom, you can also collect the upgrade parts for the weapons so it feels like you’re not stuck with one guy with a certain style of gameplay. It’s not a huge expansion, but it’s there so that you feel like you have more variety. And boss battles are well designed to take advantages of choosing different weapons and characters.
The control of the game is interesting. Besides of pressing the buttons to shoot alien guns and activate the special gadgets, it utilizes the touch screen for the shooting angles. So it’s either the D-Pad with button control, or the touch screen to shoot and angle at the same time while using D-Pad to moving and jumping purpose. First we thought it wasn’t going to work, but as we play the certain type of battles, especially the boss fight, having more than just 8 digitized-angles does help to control and enjoy the game at the same time. The game also utilizes the mic of DS, and it worked pretty well so kudos for the developers.
The graphic of Aliens in the Attic is somewhat less interesting, but it doesn’t mean it’s bad or anything. Usually for the side-scrolling platformer, you would expect a 2D graphic. It’s easier on the hardware, and developers can probably do more if they plan things right. But we also noticed that with the 3D graphic, it feels more fluid and smooth with in-game environment. A such bold move for the DS game. The background feels like nothing much is going on, but at least the enemies are in fancy colors so overall we liked it. The audios of Aliens in the Attic is not something you would call it ‘epic’, but it balances out right.
If we have to point out the flaws, it’ll be the length of the game. It feels a bit short and if you decide to put many hours into it, you’ll be able to finish the game within a day or two. Since it’s a short platformer game, we thought that the online leaderboard for record time would be an awesome idea. Another flaw, or rather annoyance that we found is that the player have to choose the language each time the game boots. We wish that the save files includes the language settings, or the real-time language change in option menu would have helped a bit more.
We’ll admit that the Aliens in the Attic for DS isn’t going to be the next-gen of the platformer1. This game probably won’t win many awards, just because many people will have biased opinions about movie-licensed game. It’s also not the best DS games we have played recently. But what this game proofs is that many times, the well-balanced game can be lot more fun than the game with broken innovation. We probably won’t play the game anymore since we beat it, but we won’t remember Aliens in the Attic as a bad game.
Maybe the below-expectations that we had before playing the game might have helped us enjoy the game, but whatever the reason is, it was fun to play. We even think that if the developers of this project would start a new game with their own stories and IP with more creative designs, it might work good for all of us, including the gamers.
