Every now and again, a game comes out that makes you wonder, “What’s the point of this?” Men in Black: Alien Crisis, is that game. The concept of movie tie in games is a dead genre for the most part, due to the overwhelming feeling of suck, of almost every title that has come out in this genre. *cough cough* Superman Returns… But seriously, the reason that they would make such a poor game is beyond me. I mean if you buy the game new, you get a 10 dollar coupon for the movie, doesn’t that smell like trouble from the beginning? Well anyways, let’s get into this.
Men In Black: Alien Crisis is meant to be a science fiction cover based shooter, that obviously involves aliens. However, the real experience is a glued to cover action game that combines below average graphics for the GameCube, with a story that’s a sure cure for insomnia, with the most obnoxious characters I’ve seen in a while.
You play as Peter Delacoeur, a thief who gets mixed up in the MIB and temporarily helps out to try and recover an artifact that his boss has stolen. Now Peter has to be the blandest, most uninteresting, most stereotypical, snarky douchebag on the current gen systems. He’s a machine of awful one-liners that makes even the best of 80’s action fans shake their heads in disgrace. Seriously, I hate this guy, and you will too if you spend five minutes listening to the awful dialogue conversations that the game delivers. The conversations that you have with other characters are at times, hard to watch. The lip synching is totally off for what they’re saying. I mean come on, when’s the last time we had this problem? Its 2012 people, get your animations together. The dialogue options for the game are a joke. You get to pick between two very bland options and if you pick the “wrong” one then the person you’re talking to will rebuttal you and you’ll only be left with one dialogue option, or the “right” one. This is a total joke. If you’re going to try and make a dialogue tree and give me this shit, then just don’t bother. It’s an insult.
As for the gameplay, it’s one of the worst in ideas, but slightly makes up for it with it’s shooting. To start off, you can’t even move your character. That’s right, you heard me. You can come in and out of cover but you can’t ever move your character forward or backwards the entire game. What is this?! Is this even a game at this point? And as for the shooting, the mentality of, let’s lock the player into a room and force him to kill waves and waves of enemies, until we’ve decided he’s killed enough and he can move on into the other room to rinse and repeat. This makes the game feel tedious and more like a job than something remotely enjoyable. However, there is one thing that redeems the gameplay. There is some variety in your equipment and your guns that make it fun to try everything out. There actually are some cool things here, such as the anti-gravity grenades that are exactly what they sound like. You have your typical pistol, assault rifle, shotgun and rocket launcher however they’ve been modified to look and feel more hi-tech. On the normal aliens, almost all of these guns are one hit kills and when they hit, your enemies disintegrate. This makes the player feel powerful and the gameplay fun. However this fades after you’ve finished the experimentation and your back to the room to room grind.
The game also implements some of the most boring repetitive and unneeded boss fights that I’ve seen in a while. They are nothing but tedious and frustrating. But luckily, the gameplay is also very easy. Like I’m talking about if you beat this game on the hardest difficulty and bragged about it, that would be like me bragging about getting with a hooker, it doesn’t take much skill. With the difficulty in mind, I’m hoping that the game was made for kids and that’s the reason but even so, kids deserve better than this. To prove my point further, the game even features a shield that protects you from all damage and makes you invisible that recharges every five seconds .However, the game takes a huge difficulty curve for the last 5 minutes of the game as the final boss is pretty tough, mostly this is due to the fact that there isn’t a single cut scene throughout a 15 minute boss fight. But for the most part, the gameplay is almost as easy as the achievements in the game. All you really have to do is play through once and you’ll have around 700 points. If you experiment and consciously try for one or two extras, you can easily hit the 1000 which is nice for the achievement whores like myself.
However, Men in Black has even more problems, hard to believe I know. During a mission that takes place in a public area, such as on the streets or in a chase scene you have to be careful not to hit civilians or it will raise the alien alarm in people’s heads. That’s right, they won’t remember a 12 foot hulking alien shooting a plasma cannon unless they are the ones getting hit. Seriously, Civilians are in the game for the sole purpose to annoy you. They serve no purpose to do otherwise and they have to be the most idiotic AI I’ve ever seen. They’re supposed to be civilians running away from a fight with aliens and yet they constantly run from left to right on the screen getting shot and therefore annoying the player.
The game’s ending is completely underwhelming, I could really care less what happens to this hollow world and these annoying characters. And the fact that they left the game wide open for a sequel is heartbreaking. What’s the sequel for a pile of shit? A mountain of poo? No thank you. Seriously DO NOT buy this game. I was lucky enough to rent this and pay nothing, and I felt like I was cheated. It is a waste of time and an overall forgetful experience.