Giant Bomb Review
12 CommentsSpace Invaders Extreme Review
4- XBLM
by Jeff Gerstmann on
Though you can't count on the online modes for additional thrills, Space Invaders Extreme is still a great update to the classic shooter.
In short, Space Invaders Extreme takes the base concept of shooting pixelated invaders and adds a bunch of combo counters to it. By shooting groups of same-colored invaders or same-shaped invaders, you'll achieve combos, some of which cause power-ups to appear, giving you bombs, wider shots, big-ass lasers, and so on. You can also chain your kills together to keep a chain meter going, increase your multiplier, and so on. All of this is made trickier by a constant influx of new invaders in different formations. You'll fight huge, laser-spewing invaders, or have to pick off tiny invaders with careful precision. Some enemies break for the ground when shot, forcing you to shoot a second time before the reach ground and kill you. Some explode when shot, setting off a chain reaction that takes other invaders along with it. You'll also enter separate bonus rounds that task you with hitting certain invaders before time expires, rewarding you with a brief section of "fever time," where you have tons of firepower and the chance to rack up a lot of points. The point is that the game feels like it has a good variety of things to keep you on your toes.
Each of the game's stages ends with a boss fight, and the later stages come in multiple forms. Your score in the previous round is what grants you access to these different higher-end stages. This gives you a reason to keep playing the same stages more than once, as you try for better combos, more breaks, and more fever time to get a higher ranking. You can practice any stage you've previously played on in arcade mode.
The presentation in Space Invaders Extreme really goes a long way. The enemies maintain their same, pixelated look from the original games while the backgrounds flicker and pulsate along with the music. The backgrounds never get too distracting, and they really look great. Each stage has its own music that sort of recalls the thumping beat of the original game without relying so heavily on it that it becomes annoying. The way the beat pumps as you play almost gives the game a rhythmic quality, while the new systems in place give the game a kind of Pac-Man Championship Edition feel.
Space Invaders Extreme is a great game, but the bunk network code is a real bummer. If replaying stages for bigger combos and higher scores to unlock more stages and bonus modes sounds like your type of game, though, you'll probably get really obsessed and absolutely get your money's worth.
