Alien Spidy Review

Alien Spidy is a score-attack platformer developed by Enigma Software Productions and published by Kalypso Media for XBLA and Steam. The game is a mixture of speed running and score attack as you complete levels trying to earn enough stars to progress through the game and eventually save the female Spidy that crash landed on the planet.

The controls are reasonably simple but the layout and button use are a little ham-fisted. Spidy can jump, shoot web and should you need it, he can restart at the most recent checkpoint. Jumping can be a little unresponsive at times due to small bumps in the floor that can lose you your momentum quite easily; effectively killing any score runs you might be doing by getting you killed on one of the many instant death hazards or just leaving you completely unable to progress unless you restart from a checkpoint.

Jumping is mapped to the A button, auto web to X and then the normal aimed web is on the right thumbstick; based entirely on what direction you tilt it in. It isn’t the most accurate way of shooting web at the best of times and takes more than a little while to get used to, let alone to use accurately. When it works it works well and because of the nature of the swinging and it genuinely can feel good when you manage it. Unfortunately the variables for; distance to the swing point, position of swing point and jump momentum can all lead to wildly different jumps, making consistent good or even average jumps quite a task.

Checkpoints are littered throughout the level and for that reason it lets you progress though reasonably easily. It’s not quite as challenging as other platformers because of this system but it does need it to make up for other elements. Quick restarting can let you keep in the flow so repeating sections isn’t always a huge chore but it will eventually lead to frustration still with some of the more unforgiving sections. When you pass a checkpoint it does give you a colour rating marking how well you did in a section so when you are after a high score it gives you a little feedback to let you know if you need to restart the level from scratch.

Score is the central point of each level with a five star rating being next to perfect timing in every movement you make in a level while you can do moderately well and still come out with two stars. You need to collect items (what they seemed to be named in the achievements) and collect them consecutively and incredibly quickly else you won’t keep the multiplier up and will earn next to nothing for each item picked up. You also slowly lose score as the time you take in a level just tick away; slowly draining your score, which can be quite demoralising.

There are score multipliers and there are items of different values. There are green items that are worth substantially more than the standard blue ones, as well as negative (red) value items that are placed in within the level as non-hazardous obstacles. Both of these are also subject to the multipliers meaning you can make rather large dents in your score if you are unlucky enough to combo negative items whilst a multiplier is active.

Powerups have two parts to them; charge and effect. In order for the powerups to work, you need to collect the charges before the effect. Once you have an effect applied you can carry on gaining charge powerups but it will decrease rapidly over time so you have to keep picking up charges to keep your momentum. So long as your charge bar is filled you can pick up new effects and it will begin use immediately with whatever charge you have left.

Powerups include effects such as; buoyancy, bubble, super jump and low gravity. Bubble is an underwater based power that lets you move freely underwater without dying but if your charge runs out you will instantly respawn. Buoyancy effectively is a jump of varying height from the water; depending on the momentum you have landing in the water during this power, you will fly upwards with a force based on landing momentum. This one feels particularly unpredictable as the height you get won’t always match up with the spheres you collect

The levels have some nice designs to them but some of the features do show off where the controls aren’t as capable as they need to be. Some jumps, swings or uses of various powers can be limited by how many jumps in a row there are, how little time between charges there are or even how small bumps in the terrain can kill your momentum.  The controls show how fiddly they can be when you have to do slow moving jumping and walking tasks, like jumping over rolling hazards or making it past water drops.

Presentation and Audio

The core aesthetic of Alien Spidy is reasonably nice but there are many instances of the foreground and background not being immediately distinguishable. The static environmental pieces tend to look better than the creatures and hazards that inhabit them. The audio tends to be quite passive; the background music is a jazzy sort of music and is quite light.

Gameplay

The level design is varied and really starts to show what it is capable of once you get to the second section but the controls are let down by awkward button mapping, messy Powerups and an auto firing web that isn’t always up to scratch. If the control scheme were changed slightly it might help with the more complex manoeuvres.  Unfortunately as it stands the controls bring down the other aspects of the game as more often than not small errors have a knock on effect that can leave you .

Overall 

It has a low bar for entry but the star requirements for progression are unfairly challenging; so if you want to get access to what is over half of the game then you will need to get a fair few 3 star ratings. It will also likely mean that you won’t (just like me) not get a chance to play the special levels which have 4 star requirements on specific levels. Unfortunately, as the controls aren’t quite tight enough to make everything run smoothly, it does lead to some cheap deaths or unavoidable respawns. If you are a big fan of platformers then you can find enjoyment in it but don’t expect to be able to unlock the second or third areas unless you put sufficient time into doing levels over and over again as you scrounge for a few extra stars.

Comments:

I have I’ve been waiting for the game since its reveal way back when so I am a little let down with how it’s turned out. The initial difficulty for the game is quite steep for the level of precision it asks for and I was close the breaking point on some levels as I was just trying to get onto the second act. I do enjoy challenging games like Super Meat Boy and Demon Souls but Alien Spidy feels unfair in how it keeps you held back from the games content and the feel of the movement and controls in general don’t feel responsive enough.

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.