Lovely graphics and sound, but weak puzzles. Priced cheaply though (Stupid Invaders (DC))

Member Name: Coopdevil

Product:	Stupid Invaders (DC)
Date:	07/06/01 (93 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Graphically Excellent, Cheap

Disadvantages: Poor Puzzles

Stupid Invaders really deserves to be held up as a prime example of how good CGI artists can really get within the computer/video game field. It also deserves to be held up as an example to other adventure game developers as to how sound effects, music and voice acting should be done in adventure games. Thirdly, it deserves to be held up to as a prime example of how not to structure the puzzles of adventure games. Two out of three ain't bad? Well, maybe...


Let's talk about the basics. Stupid Invaders is based on a French animated series called 'Space Goofs' and Stupid Invaders the game is a return to the point and click days of yore, as championed on the PC by such titles as the Monkey Island series, the Broken Sword pair of games and the various Kings Quest games. In the game, that spans two discs, you will take control of a bunch of aliens who have crash-landed on planet Earth and have just repaired their UFO ready to leave, when the evil Doctor learns of the presence, decides to capture them for his own nefarious purposes and despatches a hitman named Bolok (which doesn't seem to be pronounced as you might think...) to get 'em. Suffice to say the UFO take off doesn't go smoothly.


Stupid Invaders is graphically stunning. There are a lot of CGI cutscenes and they are all well done. These days I'm normally jaded by CGI, after all it's not the Dreamcast that's rendering these images so being impressed technologically is like thinking a great movie is purely down to the power of your video recorder, but this is very well done CGI. The backgrounds are pre-rendered Final Fantasy VII style, but look like hand-drawn 40's style cartoons. Animations are not just limited to the characters, but occur in the background as well - upon entering one corridor a great host of cockroaches or similar ran away from the door all over the walls, such a realistic effect that I felt my skin crawl!


The so
und is excellent too. No weak voice-overs in this game, each voice has it's own personality. The first alien you use sounds like Barney from the Simpsons, and Etno sounds just like British screen actor Michael York (Logans Run, Austin Powers etc.). The music is well done, and gives an unhinged feel to proceedings, but some locations use a very short snippet of music looped over and over. If you find yourself thinking things through for a few minutes, then you will be reaching for the MUTE on the remote before long.


Unfortunately the gameplay of Stupid Invaders falls down on two points. Firstly there are far too many death traps scattered around the game. Pull one lever in the submarine and Candy dies (admittedly in an amusing fashion). Pull the other, and guess what? Candy dies in a different fashion. Although amusing deathscenes are part and parcel of cartoons, there is no OOPS or Back one Move to recover. Some adventure games such as Kings Quest VII would show you a grisly death scene and then go back in time to the 'turn' before you undertook the fatal action. Stupid Invaders does nothing of the sort you have to return to a saved game. You therefore find that you are continually saving the game which is disruptive to say the least.


The meat and drink of any adventure is of course it's puzzles. The puzzles in Stupid Invaders vary between the illogical and the spoon-fed. At their most obscure, you will be head-scratching even after completing the puzzle, but with the limited numbers of inventory items and on-screen 'hotspots' making the leap towards the kind of lateral thinking required isn't actually that hard once you get into the flow of the game.


What is bad is that some of the puzzles almost complete themselves. For example,

(SPOILER ALERT!)
in one area there is a fishbowl containing a singing fish with a step-ladder next to it, obviously put there to allow the stupid invader t
o reach to top of the bowl. To get the fish it has to be swopped with a fish skeleton from a pile of rubbish. In any other game, the player would have to use the ladder, then use the skeleton on the real fish to swop them. In Stupid Invaders though, the player merely has to click on the ladder - the game notices the fish skeleton in the inventory and automatically goes on to solve the rest of the puzzle. I'm sorry but that gives none of the satisfaction of completing a puzzle!
(END SPOILER ALERT!)


It's a symptom really of the trend in modern adventure gaming towards the simplification of the user interface to the point where the traditional verbs (TAKE, DROP, OPEN etc.) have been abandoned in favour of a universal, one-size-fits-all-puzzles INTERACT control. Stupid Invaders' interface is much less sophisticated than many graphical adventures and far less so than even the oldest text adventures. To be fair, this problem isn't exclusive to this game.


So, I don't like it then? Well, no actually I found myself enjoying Stupid Invaders quite a lot. Apart from the puzzles, adventure games rely upon the interest they summon up in their locations, the fun of exploring and of trying little things to see what they do. Stupid Invaders does all of this in spades. The backdrops are stunning - the house the game starts in is very reminiscent of Day of the Tentacle, but later locales show a real streak of imagination - I thought the mould-stained aquarium section of the game was a masterpiece of originality and the Paste Bros. factory is clearly the product a highly deranged (but extremely entertaining) mind.

There is plently to do, not just in solving the puzzles but in playing with the environment, such as switching TVs and radios on and off, flipping light switches and eating things. Doesn't sound that interesting in black and white but while in the game it gives the a good illusion of depth and hints that there a
re plenty of secrets to uncover. Of course, a lot of playing with the enviroment will kill you repeatedly in diverse and usually funny ways so saving often is highly recommended.

If you are a big fan of PC-style adventure games, then buying this is a no-brainer really, as like me you will have been so starved of adventure fare recently that a new one is a breath of fresh air. If you aren't an adventure fan, then the lovely graphics and CGI may tempt you into adventures, but the puzzles don't show the genre at either it's fiendish best or newbie-friendly easiest. However, Sega have recently announced that many new Dreamcast games will be released at the £19.99 mark and Invaders is one of the first to do so. If you think £19.99 is value for three or four evenings gaming entertainment then perhaps you should be tempted.

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