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Ben 10 Alien Force: Vilgax Attacks
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Graphics & Sound:
Ben 10 Alien Force: Vilgax Attacks is, without a doubt, the best Ben 10 licensed game to come out to date... unfortunately, that really isn't saying much.
Visually, Vilgax Attacks is leaps and bounds over the previous Alien Force title which felt like little more than a generic action-platformer with a Ben 10 skin on it. Here though, each of the aliens that Ben can turn into look great and even during the rare occasion where you aren't "going hero," Ben himself looks good.
Sound, on the other hand, has quite a few problems associated with it. Not only do the bosses have way to few one-liners (seriously, if I never hear Darkstar say "Ben, Ben, Ben. When will you learn" again, it will be too soon), but even Ben's statements can get a bit tiresome. There were a couple of little details that made matters worse. For one, every time you change into an alien, that alien feels the need to shout its name. I know this happens every single time in the series, but there aren't that many changes in a show, and even if there are, they aren't quite as rapid fire as you can get during some of the puzzles that this game throws at you and the little blue guy's annoying "Spidermonkey!!" shout got to be too much, too fast.
The other aspect I found unacceptable was during the game's opening level when Grandpa Max would chime in to teach you how to do basic moves. At these times, the sentences being spoken sounded like they were just sound-clips of the actor saying various words and later pieced together so that the sentence doesn't really flow. Basically, it sounded like that strange automated voice that tells you the time, thus making it probably the most phoned-in performance I've ever heard. To make matters worse, when you get messages from Max during the rest of the game (via Plumber's Badges Ben finds), he sounds perfectly fine and thus removes any possible excuse from the earlier blunder.
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Gameplay:
Ben 10 Alien Force: Vilgax Attacks starts off with Ben, Gwen and Kevin fighting off Vilgax's invading force, but when they are finally able to defeat their foes, they find they are actually too late to stop the real trouble. So, with the help of one of Ben's newest friends, Dr. Paradox, the trio is sent into the past before the invasion in an attempt to foil Vilgax's plans once and for all. Of course, as a result of the major battle fought before the time jump, the Omnitrix ends up getting reset, and several of the aliens you had available in the first level (as well as many of the moves they can do) are no longer accessible. Don't worry though, as you progress through the game, each of the aliens will be unlocked again, and with the help of experience earned by defeating enemies, you can unlock their various moves as well.
So how do you stop Vilgax this time? Well, with the help of his alien-pet named Ship, Ben, Gwen and Kevin will travel across the universe looking for the technology Vilgax will need in order to open a doorway into the Null Void dimension. As it turns out, this means Ben will have to travel to the homeworlds of several of his alien personas (both past and present). The first world is Vulpin, the home of Wildmut. Afterwards, the team will head to Humongousaur's planet and then we get to see the strange world Brain Storm is from, but quite probably the strangest home world of the bunch (even more so than the Null Void level late in the game) is Ghostfreak's homeworld/dimension of Anur Phaetos, which is, of course, filled with enemies that can only be attacked after they have been hit with light.
Besides Vilgax (and as you probably guessed, Ghostfreak), several other long-term enemies appear in Ben 10 Alien Force: Vilgax Attacks. These include Charmcaster, D'Void (the crazed scientist formerly known as Dr. Animo) and even the strange Ben clone (sort of clone anyway), Albedo Ben. Each enemy has a unique way of defeating them, but in true platformer style, it all comes down to finding the pattern and the weakness, and exploiting them.
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Difficulty:
Ben 10 Alien Force: Vilgax Attacks's toughest parts end up coming down to the solving of some of the puzzles being thrown at you - not necessarily figuring out the solution, but the execution of that solution. One good example is the need to move a large block through a room where spikes come crashing down from the ceiling. The block is used to stop the roof from hitting you and all it really comes down to is making sure you are on the correct side of the block as you leave one segment of the ceiling and go under the next one (so you aren't left exposed to the crushing spikes). While it was really easy to see how to do this, some of the looser controls of the game made it really hard to actually do while not getting crushed. To make matters worse, this particular puzzle is immediately preceded by a part where you must push the block between two crushing wall segments. So you have to push the block half-way though, jump over it (changing from the alien that can move the block to the one that can jump over it) and then pull the block the rest of the way through. Much like the ceiling issue, a lack of really tight controls meant that I had to repeat both of these puzzles quite often before finally getting through. There is no checkpoint between the wall-puzzle and the roof-puzzle you see.
Outside of that though, the only times when actual enemies became a problem were during some of the boss battles. Darkstar, in particular, gave me quite a headache as I wasn't sure exactly how I was supposed to deal any kind of real damage to him without him retaliating and stealing my health for himself. In the end, lots of short and quick attacks was the only strategy that seemed to work against him. This means the game has a lot of easy-feeling parts, but also quite a few brick walls that can get a bit frustrating before you get past them.
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Game Mechanics:
Ben 10 Alien Force: Vilgax Attacks comes down to the ability and need to change between Ben's various alien forms. In a manner similar to using the Omnitrix itself, you use the bumper buttons to cycle through the available forms and click the Right Stick (as if slapping the watch) and then boom, you've changed. Changing back is done by clicking the Right Stick again. Besides fighting as the various aliens, there are a lot of puzzles and areas that are only accessible to certain forms. Heavy blocks can only be moved by Humongousaur, while Spidermonkey can swing from grapple-point to grapple-point and Brain Storm can hack computers (in some of the most unusual mini-games I've seen in a while). This effective use of the various aliens' abilities is one of the reasons Vilgax Attacks just feels like a better Ben 10 game, especially when compared to the last one's half-hearted attempt to let you use only a fraction of the aliens as well as Kevin and Gwen. Instead, Vilgax Attacks focuses on making Ben's gameplay experience that much better.
While Ben 10 Alien Force: Vilgax Attacks still feels a bit too much like a generic action/platformer to say it will stand out in the long run, it should still be a fairly pleasing experience to platformer fans and Ben 10 fans alike. Unfortunately, the relativity short gameplay experience means that even for those big fans out there, this game is little more than a weekend rental.
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-J.R. Nip, GameVortex Communications AKA Chris Meyer |
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