This game Ultimate Alien Cosmic Ben Fighting has a larger focus on platforming than brawling, in contrast to Alien Force.
The different alien powers come up in interesting ways: one form can tunnel underground,
one can burn down roots and wood, one can climb walls, one can fly, etc.
All of these abilities are used quite well, and you'll find yourself switching between aliens pretty often to get through the levels.
This leads to another improvement over Alien Force, you can switch between alien forms without having to first revert back to being Ben.
This speeds things up significantly, especially in the heat of combat.
Speaking of combat, it's quite an improvement to how it was before. In addition to the usual three-hit combo,
each alien has a special attack that drains some of his Stamina meter, and a super-attack which drains a separate green meter.
Then there's the health meter, of course. All three meters are built up by defeating enemies and/or absorbing colored orbs.
Each level is quite vast, and checkpoints are frequent.
You can search the areas for health and special attack bar upgrades and extra lives, some of which are quite well hidden.
What's a real shame is that the super-attack supposedly transforms your alien into its "Ultimate Form", but you don't actually see that.
A piece of character art, showing your alien's Ultimate Form, flashes over the screen, and when it goes away,
you've dealt the damage and reverted to your normal form. That's kind of a cheat, and I would've liked to control the Ultimate Form aliens.
The graphics are great. 3D characters move through 3D worlds rather than the pseudo-3D characters running around pre-rendered backgrounds used in Alien Force.
Character models are surprisingly detailed (especially bosses), the levels are big and fun to explore,
and there's never a hint of slowdown. The music is forgettable again, but the little voice samples for each alien are kind of funny.
There are just a few complaints about the game. First and foremost, the story sequences,
which amount to static images and text, are way too long. Sometimes you'll get a chuckle out of them,
but you can't skip them. Second, Ultimate Alien Cosmic Destruction Ben Fighting doesn't tell you what level still has pickups to find,
so it's hard to know whether or not you should revisit stages if you're going for 100 percent item collection.
Finally, Ben himself is still a useless wimp. It would've been nice if he had his own situational usefulness.
9Apps 4.9
