Martian Panic

Genre: Shooting Gallery Game / Hardware

Players: 1-4 (Local)

.

Review:

Martian Panic is a family-friendly Shooting Gallery game originally released in 2010 on the Wii, with versions of the game released with a ray gun accessory and shotgun-style Blaster accessories, jumping on the bandwagon that was selling gimmicky Wii games with gimmicky plastic toys to slip your Wii remote inside. In 2022, the game was ported to Nintendo Switch, and wouldn’t you know it? This version also comes with a blaster accessory that you can slide a Joy-Con controller into (or if you don’t care for the plastic accessories, you can simply get the game from the Nintendo eShop digitally – the game bundle only has a digital code anyway, no game card). Finally, the game was ported in 2023 to PC and PlayStation 4 (though no accessories for those, as far as I can tell).

Since both the eShop release and physical bundle contain a digital version of the game, and the bundle currently sells for less than the price of the digital version, I’ll be reviewing both the game and the accessory here.

In some ways, despite being a 13 year-old Wii game, Martian Panic has aged somewhat well – it was and is a colorful game with a cartoonish and silly B-Movie style theme, with lots of fun little voice clips for the characters and suitably absurd music. On the other hand, the character models are somewhat low-poly, there’s pop-in, and oh my word there is so much slowdown. I cannot fathom how a game this old running on hardware far superior to what it was launched on can run this horribly.

As for the gameplay, I cannot say how this compares to the original Wii release, but on the Nintendo Switch it only reaffirms why we don’t see many “light gun”-style Shooting Gallery games on the platform – everything depends on the use of the Wii remote’s motion control, and it is just not up to the task here, constantly lagging behind where you’re pointing, needing to have its position manually re-centered every ten seconds or so… it’s an absolute mess. This is true regardless of whether or not you’re using the blaster accessory – like the Wii “Zapper” accessory, this game’s accessory does nothing to alter the gameplay beyond putting a larger and heavier shell around the Joy-Con doing the aiming. I honestly found it easier to do so without the accessory.

I suppose I could go into the stages, enemies, and power-ups the game has on offer, but I see little point – when the entire point of the game is shooting enemies, and the game makes it virtually impossible to do so through its poor aiming controls… what more is there to say, really?

Well, okay, there is one more thing to say – the blaster accessory is actually fairly decent. As you see above, it has a colorful red/yellow/silver retro-futuristic look, like something out of a 50s B-movie (or perhaps the TV show Futurama, which bears a look inspired by that sort of aesthetic). As mentioned before, it’s surprisingly hefty and solidly built, comes with a good-quality strap (for those who wish to strictly abide by safety rules), has a nice molded shape that fits comfortably in the hand, has a decent spring-powered trigger (though it sticks a little bit), and those who load two AA batteries into the thing (via a cover in the handle locked in place with a small Phillips head screw) can turn on a switch to have the front of the device’s barrel light up in an animated fashion and make “pew pew pew” noises as long as the trigger is held down, regardless of whether or not the game is being played. Parents, if you get this for your kids, think real hard about whether that’s something you want to be hearing until the batteries die out…

Okay, I like the silly blaster accessory. Is it worth $30? Heck no. Is the game worth $30? Absolutely not. Are the pair together worth $30? Yeah, again, I’m gonna’ say “no”. You’re talking about a terrible Shooting Gallery game with atrocious slowdown and aiming controls so bad it makes the game nearly-unplayable, packed in with a fun little toy that’s nice but not more impressive than other similar toys you could get for a fraction of the price. In other words, just like it undoubtedly was when it launched on the Wii, Martian Panic on the Nintendo Switch is little more than a gimmick to try to trick you into spending money on it. Fitting, I suppose.

tl;dr – Martian Panic is a Shooting Gallery game that uses the Joy-Con’s motion-sensing capability (with or without the physical release’s bundled “blaster” accessory) to empower players to shoot aliens in a family-friendly B-movie-inspired setting. Unfortunately, the motion controls are so terrible you’ll struggle to hit anything, and the game suffers from horrendously bad slowdown. At the very least the blaster accessory is kinda’ cool, but it’s absolutely not worth anywhere close to the $30 price tag. Skip this gimmicky mess.

Grade: D

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Andy Miller, Exlene, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Ilya Zverev, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}