For more experienced gamers though you'll be thinking 'ooh, another drainpipe, I guess I'll become Spidermonkey again then'. Which to use is often signposted and helps keep the difficulty level acceptable for younger players. The most fun is Humongosaur for reasons that should be perfectly obvious from his dinosaur name.Īs you might imagine, ten different aliens mean ten different abilities, the trick being that when you encounter a puzzle on a level you keep swapping alien persona until you get the right one for the task. These cut scenes actually look quite cool and definitely reflect the cartoon series, spurring you into action for the game itself. Ben leaps into action only to encounter Professor Paradox, a Doctor Who clone complete with eccentric English accent (David McCallum no less), who takes Ben and co back in time to prevent Vilgax's plan from ever coming to fruition.
Parking my cynicism for a moment, the game opens with Ben and his friends being confronted with an invasion of the Earth by Vilgax - basically Cthulhu dressed as Conan the Barbarian. Transformers only usually transform into one other thing, Ben transforms into 10.
It's no surprise that a committee created Ben 10, the merchandising opportunities alone are enough to give most parents nightmares. Tragically, the game hardly uses the Wii's motion capabilities at all in what is a pretty average third-person platformer.įor those who don't have kids Ben Tennyson is an average kid who discovers the Omnitrix, an alien device that gives the wearer the ability to transform into one of ten different extraterrestrial forms. Actually being able to slap your wrist when wanting to change into an alien would have created a more engaging experience, after all it's the device any ten year old kid would want for getting out of scrapes and intimidating siblings. In fact that was my first thought with any Ben 10 game, surely the coolest thing in the world would have been the ability to incorporate a wrist-watch like device with the Wii-mote. I strapped on the Omnitrix (well, Wii-mote) to check it out. That's the premise of Ben 10 Alien Force Vilgax Attacks, based on the hugely successful kids series. The Earth is under attack and you, Ben Tennyson, with the capability of transforming into ten different aliens, stand in their way. Dinosaurs, special powers and a teenage protagonist tick boxes for young players, but it's less inspiring for the parents playing along. Ben 10 Alien Force Vilgax Attacks paints by numbers and misses its opportunity to use the Wii controls to create something more novel.