I Saw A UFO

UFO Rampage is a game created by pluton

In the sky last night, made me wonder if everything was gonna be alright. If anyone knows that song then you’re amazing. Anyways, prepare for review number 7! In this review I will be tackling UFO Rampage by pluton. I’ve been playing this at least once a day for the last week or so, trying to write this review, this was actually my third review when I began writing it. Anywho, I’m not going to bore you with my problems, long story short: I couldn’t beat the final level of gameplay because it was really hard and after my first try it would never load again. But I realized that pluton had put a link to a walkthrough in the description, I didn’t want to review it without seeing the ending, this walkthrough allowed me to see the ending, so let us review it! UFO Rampage by pluton, here we go.

UFO Rampage has an interesting thing it does, it gives you a little view of a map being held by some green alien hands and shows an ‘X’ where your next location is. It does this before every level and is mildly cute. I thought so anyways…not as cute as a dog in a tuxedo but…it was nifty. Anywho haha, in UFO Rampage, you play as Alienakin Skyfloater, an insecure pilot who claims to be the fastest in the galaxy, yet spends the whole game telling himself he’s doing better than he actually is. Now, my problem with this is that he cites himself as the “fastest UFO pilot in the galaxy”. Um, a UFO is an unidentified flying object. That would be like Lewis Hamilton going someplace where they had never seen a racecar and saying “I am the fastest unidentified rolling object driver in the galaxy!” Surely if you’re so good at maneuvering something, you’ve at least identified the name of what that something is, right? Anyways, I’m rambling on about nothing. Also, just to further prove that Mr. Skyfloater is a foolish tryhard, he has a tattoo of a generic alien head on his wrist. Moving on.

This game really made me smile a lot, the description of every level was filled with brilliantly cheesy dialogue. Some typos were present, but gosh did pluton make the main character a fun character to play as, brilliant job there. It was due to the phenomenally cheesy writing that I didn’t want to review this game without seeing the ending. With that out of the way, this game has four levels of actual gameplay. 3 main levels and then a boss fight. The game gets harder as the levels go on, which was fantastic, and the levels presented varying obstacles to you. Basically the first level’s obstacle is a very strict time limit, the second presented a mixture of slow and high speed obstacles, and the third was all over the place with obstacles, it was crazy.

But you probably are having a hard time picturing this because I haven’t actually explained the gameplay. Well, you control Alienakin’s extremely fast and slippery UFO, trying to abduct various Earth-creatures. Actually saying various is a bit of a stretch, there are pigs, cows, fish, and sailors. The usage of mad cow disease to explain why some cows were bad cows was enjoyed as well. The game takes you through 4 Earth environments: a farm, a field, an ocean, and a lighthouse-dock area. They all looked pretty good and maintained a consistent graphical style. There is only so much detail you can put into a field of hay, which makes me wish pluton would have chosen a different environment where more scenery could’ve been implemented. Oh well.

Now, I mentioned the final level earlier in this review. The boss fight is pretty intense. The lighthouse’s beam of light is deadly in this fight, the sailors are angry at you for stealing their “holy fish” (yes, you steal a holy fish). So you’ve got to fly laps around this lighthouse while abducting body segments of angry sailors. Yes, I said body segments. You abduct their head and body separately. So first you steal their holy fish, and then you dismember them with highly advanced technology, that is sick (not in the radical way). Alienakin is a heartless monster, but the dialogue makes you love him anyways. Just like…a charismatic serial killer! That’s dark, someone tell me if I should take that out of here…I think it works.

Back on topic, the boss fight was intense, a high point of difficulty, and was creative. That is a great way to end the game. However, I wish its very final level would have closed the narrative in a better way than our sick alien friend just saying he was tired and was gonna hit the hay. I mean, we could have perhaps got an inside view of the UFO and all of our stolen animals; I especially would’ve liked to get a better view of the holy fish. But alas, we settle. Great story though, in the sense that it was fun to read…it wasn’t a page turner but it was fun.

The Wrap-Up

UFO Rampage is a great deal of fun, it is a great example of a not-so-serious story being done EXCEPTIONALLY well, I can’t stress that enough, the writing was just fun. I mentioned the boss level refused to load for me most of the time, so keep that in mind before playing it, but I’d play it anyway. The game is short, it doesn’t stand out in gameplay at any point, and its scenery is just average or a bit above. But I love this game anyway, if for nothing else, our love-hate relationship caused by loading problems.

Rating: 57.846/100

I use a super-secret and amazing formula in order to rate games, check it out… http://forums.sploder.com/index.php/topic,371010.msg4449809.html#msg4449809

Feature Worthy: No, not enough content.

Did you like this game? Check this one out!

http://www.sploder.com/games/members/pluton/play/ufo-rampage-teaser/

That was the teaser for the full UFO Rampage game; I only give you this link because it raises an interesting question. Why the difference in time restraint from the teaser to the exact same level in the full game? The difference is astoundingly large…makes me wonder. If you’re reading this pluton, I want answers.