Men in black: Alien Crisis
Developer: FunLabs
Publisher: Activision
Platform: Xbox360, Playstation 3, Wii
Genre: Action-Adventure
Rating: Teen
Release Date: May 25 21, 2012
Hey Kids, it’s summertime, and you know what that means. VIDEO GAMES BASED ON MOVIES! No doubt as some of you know, video game based on movies are pretty bad as it seems that they try to make a game in a short time frame and release it near or at the same time as the movie. Someone has to do it, and as the newest reviewer for 8bitfix, I get the pleasure of playing them all! (God help me).
Men in Black- interesting how there have only been three games made in the series, with the last one (Men in Black II: Alien Escaped) release almost 10 years ago. Well, considering how it has been 10 years since the last MiB movie, and 10 years worth of development in games, surely Men in Black: Alien Crisis should be a good game right?
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Presentation
In MiB: Alien Crisis, you play as Peter Delacoeur, an archeologist turned thief who just stole a power artifact and handed it over to Emilio Chauncy, who plans on using it to take over the world.After getting mixed up with the MiB, he is given a temporary status with them to fix his screw up by running around and shooting aliens.
As you can tell by this explanation, it is pretty simple, if not silly means to try and tell a story. Peter (Agent P) is basically a white Will Smith: he tries to cut snappy remarks but each good line he has, he has about 10 bad lines. Speaking of Will Smith, J or K aren’t in the game, they are simply mentioned as being turned into statues.
Graphics
Graphics in this game are pretty bland at best. Granted there are times that you may see one or two interesting things (none of which come to mind at the moment), but the other times, it looks like something you would see from a PS2. For a game that is set in New York City, it seems very odd just how empty New York City is as it seems there isn’t anyone there except those who get stuck in the crossfire between the MIB and the Aliens. The only thing more bland than the scenery is the people and the aliens. It seems that Frank the Pug was the only character that the animators got right, while everyone else just look like they are staring off into space, their mouths move even when they aren’t saying anything, and the aliens don’t have much variety outside of different color schemes; for a game that focuses on an “Alien Crisis” there sure is a lack of variety.
Sound/Music
Man, what I would do for some Will Smith music in this game… There doesn’t seem to be too many musical pieces in the game, perhaps just the main menu, sneaking around music and the dramatic, “Oh you are in a gunfight” music. You are better off brining your own.
As for sound, they are least got that right. The gun sounds are entertaining, although they don’t sound much like their movie counterparts and at least the voices are tolerable when they aren’t cracking cheap one liners.
Gameplay
MiB: AC can be broken down into four parts: Action, Stealth, Investigation and Driving. While there is a variety of things to do in game, they are pretty short as the last two are pretty much are only seen near the start of the game, and near the end.
Investigation & Driving: Because these two aren’t seen as much in-game, it would be easier to group these together into one explanation. In Investigation you go around scanning items in the area and talking to people. By scanning specific items, you can get new conversation prompts to be able to move the plot along. Basically, it is a short Ace Attorney: Investigations mini game, and this is only seen two or three times, and in the other two you only speak with one guy. As for driving, you are in the MiB flying car as you shoot down aliens while avoiding other cars and lightposts; that’s about it. You can technically fail by crashing into too many vehicles, but the game is nice enough to litter the field with gates to lower the awareness meter, while the special weapons can one hit kill anything you come across.
Action and Stealth: You would think that MiB, a series that has a lot of special Alien weaponry would be a decent third person right? Well it would be, but here we instead have an On-Rails Shooter. In each gun fight, you will be stuck behind cover as you can move into other cover spots to the left or right of you. In the stealth parts, you will advance slowly while you shoot cameras and put guards into bubbles. The game is at least clever enough to make it so that you have to take out cameras before the guards, and how you just can’t take out a guard if there is another one next to them, but really it is a pretty forgettable part of the game.
As for the “Action” part of the game, it surprisingly does work well. In you have played Sin and Punishment, it is like that (complete with the multiplier), minus the flying and being good. While the game wants you to use cover to peak out and shoot the aliens, you quickly realize that the cover doesn’t work well, gets in your way more than it does “cover you” and you are better off just standing out in the open to shoot the aliens. Really the aliens are all pushovers and go down in a few hits (if not one or two when you upgrade your weapons) and they drop a lot of items to heal you and give you ammo. The only way you can die in this game is if you aren’t paying attention to when a big alien walks out and ignore him, or if you are fighting one of the three bosses (FYI, shoot the pink leaves when the plant grabs you). As I said before, you can upgrade your weapons, but this is just the following: Fire more rounds faster, do more damage, and so forth, while the special abilities aren’t anything special either. The use of the multiplier is nice, especially how you can use abilities like the bubbler, freeze ray, etc. to help increase it and get a higher score, but that’s about it.
Lasting Appeal
You may be asking what you can do after you beat this game in Two or Three hours. Well, you can play it again on a higher difficulty, or go into the VR missions to play the challenges or even subject your friend to this torment with you. Outside of that, there isn’t much else MiB:AC offers. Granted if you are an achievement hunter, then I suppose this game can hold your attention a bit longer.
Conclusion
The thing that kills me about this game is that it is actually a pretty decent game. If this was a XBLA or PSN game, I could actually make the suggestion of buying it, but as a $60 game, you are getting ripped off. Where it stands, if you have a few hours to burn and want to try something new, I could suggest a rent at best, but if you plan on buying Men in Black: Alien Crisis, then you will really be in a crisis.
Score: 3.5/10
Now if you excuse me, I need you to look into at Will Smith for about 10 seconds.
Review Scale