Ben 10: Alien Force

If you’re over the age of sixteen and haven’t experienced the “joy” of having children yet then you probably have no idea who Ben 10 is. He’s the star of a cartoon in which he uses a snappily titled Omnitrix, a big watch-type thing, to turn into ten different alien forms. One at a time of course. The only thing is, he can only switch into five of the ten in the game, a first clue to the laziness of this title.

Having watched a few episodes of the series, and you’ll have to dig deeper than youtube, it’s plain to see that it’s fast moving, well-made and a lot of fun. The cut-scenes seem to have ignored this and boiled the characters down to annoying ginger girl, do-gooder hero and grumpy surf-geek Kevin. And my do they drag on. Surely these are the bits to look forward to after smashing up the endless streams of enemies? But they’re not. You’ll just want to skip them to get to the action.

At first you’ll almost love the side-scrolling beat-‘em-up that this is trying to be. Defeating enemies in the different alien forms is a blast, as is switching between them. Groups continue to spawn for a while in an area blocked by invisible walls before a familiar Streets of Rage “Go” arrow flashes up telling you to proceed. The only trouble is that this gets old fast; probably because the levels are so long and decoration-wise, have little variety. The first level in the fun fair contains loads of giant teddies to bash up, you’ll be smacking them into pieces at the start and then running past them to just make it all stop later on. Each new enemy is introduced by a character, telling you their strengths and weaknesses, which is a nice touch. In the first half you’ll be fighting knights, knights with swords, knights with maces, knights on metal horses and knights with laser guns. They’re pushing it with the last one, and shows that they were devoid of ideas when coming up with the twenty or so enemies that populate the seven levels.

Combat is combo based, with new combos being unlocked at random places within a level. You can pick which character’s combo you want to unlock, so if you’ve got a favourite you can concentrate on him. Our particular fighting favourite is Big Chill, not a music festival in the Malverns, but a monk who can freeze enemies into ice cubes. Ben, when in any alien form, is a formidable fighter. The thing is you don’t control Ben all the time, Kevin and ginger winger Gwen also pop up. Kev can turn into any substance he touches. Except it’s not any substance, he can only touch the conveniently placed glowing round balls of rock, metal or grass. These sections flag because neither character has any useful combos.

That being said though as you progress and unlock more characters and combos, the game improves a little, simply because you can do more with the waves of enemies that keep appearing from nowhere. Humongosaur is a giant dinosaur who, like the rest of the alien forms, keeps spouting out one of three annoying stock phrases. There’s no denying the appeal of being a massive dinosaur, but why does he have to do some terribly contrived platforming areas at the end when he’s so slow and cumbersome?

… continued