Space Invaders Extreme 2 Review [DS]

28 Oct 2009 at 15:02:37 by Tim McDonald
Systems used to review this title: (DS)

Space Invaders Extreme 2 is good. I feel I have to break from tradition and point this out in the opening paragraph because if you've actually clicked to read a review of a game with “Space Invaders” in the title, I feel like I need to capture interest as quickly as possible. And no, I'm not lying.

Space Invaders Extreme 2 is an update of a classic in much the same way as Pac-Man: Championship Edition, one of the best games on Xbox LIVE Arcade, in that - rather than simply adding more levels or changing it into something it's not - it plays with the basic formula.

The basic premise is almost identical: you control a little ship at the very bottom of the lower screen, and shoot at waves of Space Invaders – also on the lower screen - as they steadily move from side to side. What happens next depends on which mode you're playing.

If you're going through Time Attack, then things proceed roughly as you'd expect – you clear the game's five stages as fast as humanly possible, ripping through the encroaching alien hordes, scoring power-ups to grant new weapons, and desperately avoiding return fire. If you're playing Score Attack, though... well. Here's where the game's impressive combo system comes into play.

All of the Space Invaders have a different colour, as well as different shapes, and using these to your advantage is the best way to score big points. Destroying four of the same colour in a row nets you a power-up, and then destroying four more of a colour in a row triggers a bonus round. As that probably made little sense – destroying four red then four red triggers a bonus round, as does four red then four green, or four blue then four black. Hitting one of any other colour, however, will break the chain.

Bonus rounds fill the top screen with enemies, too; it might be a whirling pattern with a central Invader that needs to be destroyed, or it might be one giant space invader made up of fifty-odd little blocks that all need to be knocked out. Destroying that (while the ones on the lower screen get in the way, as you'd expect) triggers a Fever, which grants you a special weapon for the duration of the Fever, makes all Invaders on the lower screen gold and causes them to drop score-giving items when shot, and spams UFOs across the top screen, which give yet more points.

Which would be enough, you'd think, but this is barely half of the game's system. When there's no bonus round or Fever, the top-screen is occupied with a 3x3 bingo board. Each square on this has an internal colour and an external colour – one representing the colour of the first four aliens killed to trigger a bonus round, the other representing the colour of the last four – and completing the round triggered fills in that square. As you'd expect, getting three squares in a row (or more, if you manage to trigger, say, a double bingo) puts you into a sort of Super Fever, which racks up yet more points.

And those three paragraphs don't even mention the fact that destroying all aliens in any given horizontal row, or vertical column, or of the same shape, can also grant bonuses.

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