Alien Spidy (2013)
Genre: Platformer Developer: Enigma Software Productions Price: £7.99
Alien Spidy follows the tradition of frustrating platformers, but replaces the 'simply beat the level' mechanics seen in Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be The Guy' with a score attack function. Starring an alien spider (which should have been obvious from the title, really) who has lost his explorer friend Virgi, the game has you running, jumping and swinging your way through 69 levels of extremely challenging gameplay.
The player's controls are simple enough; Spidy can move from side to side and jump using the arrows and the space bar. He can also fire webs and swing on them using the mouse. But then, it's not the controls or even the completing levels that is the challenging aspect of Alien Spidy, but the scoring. Each level is covered with a series of collectibles which the player is encouraged to collect. If these are collected in rapid succession, a multiplier builds, allowing the player to score more for the same tokens. Just to make things harder, there are also collectibles that count down in value the longer it takes for you to collect them, and tokens that reduce your score should you touch them.
But the whole thing is far too challenging for a variety of reasons. One problem with the game is that, despite the fact that it was designed with controllers in mind, playing it with a controller is practically impossible due to the sheer lack of precision when firing webs with the analog sticks. Whilst playing with the mouse is slightly better, the constraints on each level are far too strict. Unlike the extremely laid back Super Meat Boy, the game takes points off for every respawn, meaning that whilst players playing at lower levels are unlikely to have much of a problem ignoring the scoring system, those actively trying to progress in the game are going to have to manually reset levels repeatedly, seeing a loading screen each time.
All in all, I couldn't really get into Alien Spidy. Aside from the fact that I hated its swinging physics (gods, I really hate imprecise physics-based platforming) Whilst there's something disheartening about a game that constantly gives you a one-star rating quite as often as this one, it's something that I could put up with were the game actually any fun. From my point of view, Alien Spidy is a game that's just not worth your time.
How long did I play? - 0.8 hours Did I finish it? - No Would I finish it? - No
