[XBLA] Space Invaders Extreme Review

[AgtFox]

Space Invaders Extreme Review

Title: Space Invaders Extreme
Platform: Xbox Live Arcade
Developer: Backbone Entertainment
Publisher: Taito
ESRB: Everyone
MSRP: 800 Microsoft Points
Editor: Loren 'AgtFox' Halek

What's Hot: A reimagining of an old classic; the cool weapons; the HD look; the boss fights

What's Not: Movement of ship seems a bit slow; not many players out there playing for multiplayer/co-op gaming

Space Invaders Extreme comes out a little over 30 years since the arcade original came out. It is hard to believe I was only 2 years old when Space Invaders came out in 1978. I didn't play it back, then, but once the 80s and the Atari 2600 release rolled around I played it here and there. I don't remember ever being good at the original game and I certainly didn't play it as much as many of the other popular games out at the time. I was excited to see if Backbone and Taito could update an old game to a new generation much like Pac-Man Championship Edition did a couple years ago. I ended up being pleasantly surprised.

The graphics in the game have been given a huge boost from the original arcade game into HD, the music thumps with industrial-like strength and a smooth female voice announces the game and many of the special things you do. The game isn't built around the music like Lumines is, but it does a good job at keeping the music enough in the background that you notice it, but it doesn't really affect your playing of the game. The basic gameplay from the original arcade game is still present: you move your ship to the left and right and shoot the aliens and ships at the top of the screen that are moving toward you.

This game mixes stuff up a bit with a few things. First off is the combo meter that is present on both single and multiplayer games. You build the combo meter by continuing to kill aliens without the meter running out. This allows you to increase your multiplier. Along with this, if you hit four (4) of the same color aliens in a row a special weapons will be dropped. There are also bigger versions of the aliens showing up every now and again, the addition of boss fights with really big aliens and the fact that hitting ships on the top will put you into a mini-game where you can score a "Fever" where you start massively eliminating aliens.

Along with the single-player mode that puts you through five (5) stages, which you can continue at the beginning of the last stage after you lose your lives, there are multiple options to play in multiplayer, including a pretty cool co-op mode. The co-op mode has you and three (3) friends on the same screen taking out the aliens. You have to converse with each other in order to get special weapon drops since each of you have a combo meter and the game keeps track of each color you shoot. You shoot four (4) in a row and a special weapon will drop. The co-op mode is a bit crazy, but it is also a lot of fun.

If there were a couple things I could knock this game on it is that your ship moves awfully slow from left to right and that there aren't a whole lot of people online to play co-op or multiplayer with, although you do have the option of local play as well. This game has plenty of things to offer in multiplayer, there just aren't many people out there with this game it seems.

Space Invaders Extreme is an excellent update of a classic game. Like I said, I wasn't too into the game back when it first came out, but I do recognize that it is an important game in the annals of video game history. I think the game is well worth the download, just for the fact that I'd then have more people to play with after being done with the single-player arcade mode.

Score: 4 out of 5 CoGs


Loren says, "A week done update to a classic game, it's well worth the pickup for the new graphics and juggling of the original gameplay done by Backbone"

[MachEnergy]

Wonderful review again Mr. Fox.

I wish I had more available time right now. After playing the demo, this is a game I would certainly purchase, but not with everything else coming first.

[Johan]

Is the original version included? I sooooo want the original version to be included. It wasn't in the DS version.

[AgtFox]

Originally Posted by Johan

Is the original version included? I sooooo want the original version to be included. It wasn't in the DS version.

Not that I know of unfortunately.

[LarsenNET]

Originally Posted by Johan

Is the original version included? I sooooo want the original version to be included. It wasn't in the DS version.

I'm in the same boat, if it was included I would for sure buy it but now I'm still on the fence.

[Food Nipple]

If someone were to ask me to describe Space Invaders Extreme in a single word, I'd probably say "Inscrutable." In the era of the in-game tutorial, Space Invaders Extreme has no problem turning a blind eye to any notion of usability.

That's not to say that the controls are complicated; they aren't, nor are the background visuals, created by Space Giraffe's Jeff Minter, so over the top that they hinder your ability to determine what's going on, though they are close to that point. No, the reason this game is so perplexing is because it's a Gordian Knot of different game mechanics and score bonuses all piled on top of each other, with lots of nuance and special rare cases that make you utter "Why the hell did that just happen" even after hours of experience under your belt, but then half the fun of the game is being overwhelmed by the mess.

Despite all my hours invested, there's still a lot I haven't seen. A single game may only be 5 stages long, but there's actually 11 different branching levels, and I have yet to see them all. Plus, there's entire other game modes that I have yet to unlock. I checked the leaderboard for 'Extreme' mode last week just after the contest ended on Tuesday night, and only four people had managed to unlock it.

These retro games have been so successful on XBLA thanks in no small part to the online leaderboards, and this is where SPE misses the mark. First of all, your progress is checkpointed at the beginning of each stage, and if you run out of lives you can continue with no penalty to your score. Unlike every other arcade game I know of, your score on the leaderboard isn't reflective of your best game played, it's an amalgamation of as many tries as it takes you to beat the game to your satisfaction, which I think detracts from the fun of the high score list.

The other problem with the leaderboards is that your score counts even if you change the default number of lives. Everyone should be required to achieve their scores under the same set of parameters. Ultimately, neither one of these problems is enough to ruin the game, but it's nevertheless disappointing that Backbone Entertainment dropped the ball on a such a simple, but critical part of the game.

[quidmonkey]

Never did beat Stage 5-E in the DS version.