games: Space Invaders Extreme

I was so excited when Space Invaders Extreme, a 30th anniversary revamp of the old classic, turned up on my doorstep. It’s available on DS and PSP and I’ve been playing the DS version, so let’s see if this modern take can live up to the status of the original.

Well the core gameplay is still there with it’s hoards of pixellated aliens sidestepping their way back and forth across the screen towards your doom at an ever increasing speed. But my goodness has it been repackaged nicely. The reason why for me Space Invaders earned its reputation as one of the greats, was it’s sense of pace. It’s a simple trick, but the increase in speed as the aliens get closer to you really gets the adrenaline pumping.

In this game, you can see that the developers have completely understood it and have taken it to another level, and one that entirely warrents the word extreme in the title. The formations have been made smaller and start off faster which, combined with the small screen keeps rounds nice and short. So when working your way through a level you are constantly facing new and refreshed groups, and so constantly facing that buzz as they threaten to reach you. This culminates in a satisfyingly challenging boss battle for each level. There’s a decent amount of variety throughout, and a new scoring and shooting system which also adds to the intensity of the game.

There’s a chaining system giving you multipliers to encourage you to keep up your own pace of attack, and a high frequency of flying saucers. You also now generate gun power ups yourself by taking out enemies in groups of their own colour. You can also generate point bonuses for other combinations such as taking out rows or columns. This keeps things nice and busy as you now have extra tactics to bear in mind as you pick your way through the blocks of baddies. Certain combos will also generate multicoloured flying saucers. These will take you into a mini game with a certain objective, which if you pass, will put the game into frenzy mode where you get massively boosted weapons.

The visuals are lush and exciting with brightly coloured moving backgrounds, and the music is addictive and driving rather than cheesy. And in a stroke of genius, the music actually incorporates your hits into its soundtrack much like in Rez.

There are also a variety of options so you can turn off the moving background if that gets a bit much, and you can vary the gap between the two screens on the DS to suit you.

You can play in arcade mode which lets you choose the number of cannons you start with and gives you saves and retries, or you can play ranking mode which doesn’t have these features but allows you to upload your score to Global Rankings. You can also play individual stages on varying difficulties, and multiplayer, which on the DS can be done with locally without a second cartridge via download play, or over the wifi network.

And for those of you who are just as extreme about Space Invaders as the game itself is, there is also support on the DS for playing with the paddle peripheral available from Japan.

I always try to be balanced, but to be honest, I can’t think of a single bad thing to say about this release. It’s based around a simple but solid game mechanic which has stood the test of time, and has here been brought up to date in a glorious and addictive fashion. It’s recommended retail price is £20 and with places like Amazon selling it for considerably lower, you really can’t go wrong.
This is a 5 star game - Happy Birthday Space Invaders!

For the best of the rest:

Game Spot:
There’s nothing quite like an old video game series celebrating a landmark anniversary to make you feel old, especially when it’s a 30th anniversary, as is the case for Space Invaders. The game that literally created a shortage of yen coins in Japan is celebrating three decades of blasting aliens with Space Invaders Extreme for the PSP. New graphics, revamped gameplay, fun (albeit strictly offline) multiplayer, and a low price make this new imagining of Space Invaders a surprisingly good time.

IGN:
What a way to celebrate an anniversary. Taito’s Space Invaders turns 30 this year, an absolutely huge milestone for such a young market. Clearly the company really wanted to give its property a huge send-off for its thirtieth birthday, so enter Space Invaders Extreme: the 17 bazillionth remake of the classic shooter. It may seem like “yet another remake” but honestly, it’s without a doubt the greatest update to the franchise ever created. It’s energetic and addictive, and does an absolutely fantastic job retaining the old-school charm of the original 1978 classic. 


Euro Gamer:
Hey! Did you know that Space Invaders was originally inspired by Breakout? I didn’t - until I looked at Space Invader’s Wikipedia page in a desperate attempt to come up with an interesting fact to begin this review. As it turns out, it’s not only a suitable theme for this intro, but I can use it to link to the Arkanoid DS review too. Thanks Wikipedia!