Game Reviews

Aliens Drive Me Crazy

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Aliens Drive Me Crazy

Aliens Drive Me Crazy is an infinite-runner, but it takes more than a few levels to figure that out.

This game doesn't reveal its origins casually, and that's no bad thing, as it allows you to get a feel for the gameplay and for its humour before genre awareness kicks in and you start comparing it to other games.

Back seat driver

Another peculiarity of its first impression is that Aliens Drive Me Crazy would have you believe the gameplay is split up into two modes. After the quick and inoffensive setup about an alien invasion descending upon the human race, your cutesy redneck protagonist jumps in his car and sets off on a high-speed rescue mission.

The world is rapidly falling apart thanks to our new alien overlords, so there's a lot to avoid as you speed across the side-scrolling countryside.

The car accelerates at full pelt automatically, so all you need to worry about is jumping over obstacles and trying to wheelspin on the invaders' heads. Or, as you crash into buildings, boosting up through the ceilings to collect coins and kill more aliens on the floors above.

Yeah, your car can jump, but it's a suspension of disbelief that we're immediately happy to accept. There's a strong comic element to this game, and a bouncing car doesn't jar with that style at all. You're not in the motor for very long before you pull up at your destination and take to foot anyway.

The runaround

Once you're inside the building your wee chap behaves much like his car, running at full speed automatically. When he hits an external wall, however, he turns around and runs the other way.

So you've not actually got any control over his horizontal movement, other than deftly using the walls to your directional advantage.

Up and down continues to boost you through the ceilings or drop you down through the floors, which serves to help you climb the building, rescue humans, and take aliens by surprise.

When an alien comes into view, you automatically fire whichever weapon you've equipped with before the level began. Upgrading your weapons using collected coins is a strong early tactic, as your limited movement makes dodging alien fire quite tricky.

So despite the two gameplay elements in Aliens Drive Me Crazy appearing quite different from each other, in action they come together nicely to deliver an ultimately coherent experience. The game itself is still a tad haphazard here and there, and more often than not you win through luck rather than skill, but it's an enjoyable 30 minutes of slapstick gaming.

Where Aliens Drive Me Crazy really excels is in its animation and audio. The music is a top-notch combination of sci-fi kitsch and sporty chase tunes, while the visuals boast a fluid, organic quality that all conspire to lend the game an essential, welcome depth.

This is a slightly contrived yet enjoyable game that bespeaks a developer growing in leaps and bounds.

Aliens Drive Me Crazy

A good distraction for anyone who's looking for a new infinite runner with a dash of personality, but not a game that will be long remembered
Score
Spanner Spencer
Spanner Spencer
Yes. Spanner's his real name, and he's already heard that joke you just thought of. Although Spanner's not very good, he's quite fast, and that seems to be enough to keep him in a regular supply of free games and away from the depressing world of real work.