Space Invaders Extreme

Taito have been churning out Space Invaders for years. In fact, it's been over 30 years now since it made its arcade début. For the 30th anniversary, Space Invaders Extreme was released. You could call this game a reboot of the series because a lot sure has changed but it shows vague resemblance to the original game. The Space Invaders formula sees a legion of invaders moving in formation across the screen and when they reach the side, they drop down a level and repeat. Should an invader reach the bottom of the screen, or should you get hit by a bullet, you lose a life. You control a canon that can move horizontally across the bottom of the screen and fire in order to defeat the oncoming attack. In this game, the invaders don't seem to concerned for reaching the bottom of the screen, and they aren't too aggressive in their shooting patterns either. Strangely it is a difficult game because of the extremely cheap deaths. The 4 barriers to hide behind have been removed, and a variety of invaders with different behaviours have been introduced. They come in all different sizes and colours, some have shields, deflector shields, laser weapons, teleporting ability; you name it; there are so many ideas here. It is important to learn and recognise the different types as soon as the wave appears because you need to be prepared. When the game gets hard, it's important to identify the suicide bomber types who quickly break from formation and go for your baseline, or the invaders that shoot against the walls which then bounce diagonally! It becomes frustrating when you are dodging a bullet and an invader quickly fires its laser in your path, or you are prevented from reaching the other side of the screen because of the laser fire, and a suicide bomber decides to go on the offensive when you cannot possibly reach him. Teleporting Invaders are just as annoying when they appear at point blank range and take you out! The colours of the invaders are important because shooting a sequence of them makes them drop a power-up; spread gun, laser, bombs, or shield, which can help drastically. The UFOs make a return, and shooting them could take you to a mini-game to shoot invaders under various rules for bonus points. After finishing off several waves in the main game, the level culminates in a boss fight which are quite varied and interesting. To complete the game, you need to complete 5 levels with 5 lifes. One game mode saves after each level so you can always reattempt if you lose all lifes, and another mode doesn't allow continues but allows you to submit your score to the online leaderboards. It may sound like a short game with a lack of content, but the game does have branching paths, and a harder version is unlocked once you have completed the game once. Graphically, the game is a bit mixed. The sprites are pretty plain, and the backgrounds are a bit hyper, but these moving backgrounds can be disabled. Overall, Space Invaders Extreme is a decent game and you have to give credit to Taito for trying to spice it up. Personally, I found it frustrating to do well for a few minutes, only to get wiped out several times by really cheap attacks and having to restart the level.

Although fun for a while, it becomes very monotonous, there is no way to save the games and it appears to be just the one game. I played on it several times but got fed up mainly because there were not any variations.Possibly worth renting for a few days if you like that sort of game but definitely not worth buying