Invasion of Alien X – Earth in Crisis

Genre: Shooting Gallery / Tower Defense

Players: 1

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Review:

Invasion of Alien X is an odd blend of an Arcade-style Shooting Gallery game with a Tower Defense game, where you’re shooting invading aliens while also shooting at carriers bringing defense towers to the battlefield to place them.

That’s actually a pretty interesting idea, and as much as the Switch seems to have been flooded with Tower Defense games, this is a refreshing approach to the genre… or at least, it would be, if it were better executed.

Enemies in this game are bullet sponges, which is par for the course for Tower Defense games, but tend to make shooting games a drag. More problematic is that it’s unclear when you shoot one of the flying towers where that tower will be placed. And on top of that, the game does a poor job of making you aware what is going on around you. This game really, really could have benefited from a split-screen presentation with half of the screen showing you an overhead map to give you a better strategic overview of the area.

Another mix of good potential and poor execution is the presentation, which gives us ridiculous themed enemies in a voxel art style that’s cute and memorable… but is at times difficult to see, as enemies often blend into each other.

I really want to like Invasion of Alien X more. It is so overflowing with personality and interesting ideas… but those ideas are all implemented poorly, and the result is a game that’s far more fun in theory than it is in practice.

tl;dr – Invasion of Alien X is a game that combines a Shooting Gallery-style game with a Tower Defense, in a way that’s absolutely full of originality, and bursting with personality… but is also unfortunately poorly-executed, with the limited perspective making for too much confusion, and the mix of genres resulting in neither being done especially well. This game might make for an interesting study case, but it’s not a fun game to play.

Grade: C-

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