Ben 10 Alien Force (PSP) | Game Review

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Written: Wednesday. September 23, 2020.

So after playing Ben 10: Protector of Earth, I decided to play Alien Force (duh). Same as before, I played this on the PPSSPP on the PC. My controller is that of a keyboard, and I use the save state/load state feature of the emulator (cause I'm a weakling). I played the game on Hard Mode (much like the first game), cause I prefer it that way (and it also lets me know that this game is not holding back on anything as I go through it).

Here are my thoughts on the game:

  • Each stage takes too long to finish.
    • like, in the first game, the length of each stage was already a bother to me. I could understand why it took so long, cause I was playing the game on Hard Mode, but with Alien Force's game stages, it was really too long and too tedious. I would often have to quit playing the stage and resume it (by way of load states) the next day, cause one day playing just one stage (and realizing I've played for more than 30 minutes within just that one stage) is gonna be tiresome as hell.
    • Can't they have just modulated the stages or divide each stage with a checkpoint. And since we're in the topic of division, we could've had all stages optional to play as Gwen and Kevin (more on this later). Ben is the star of the show, but as a game, he gets tiresome to play (especially once you've got a taste of the two other playable characters).
    • It may just be because I played it on Hard Mode, but some of those wall-crawling gimmicks were hard to get through. There was a stage where I always got zapped back into the beginning of the wall-crawling session! Spidermonkey can take that zap like a champ; he doesn't need to fall every time he hits a rotating zap thing or whatever they tried to rip off of Mario and Ocarina of Time (oops). They could've just decreased your hit points until you ran out and have to really repeat the course. But no, instead they want us to do a one-take on this seemingly impossible wall-crawling course.
  • There are too few combos to make.
    • I mean, come on. I was able to unlock all of the combos available half-way through the game. What the hell was that? Did the developers get lazy or something? You're already just letting the players use FIVE of Ben's transformations. WHY WOULD YOU NOT FOCUS ON THE ATTACK PATTERNS AND COMBOS?! That's basic game design.
      • Swampfire was the easiest transformation to turn into (and I'm saying this as a stretch). He's the half-equivalent of Heatblast, obviously. But his game-play (as with the others) lacks in fluidity, because we only get to use combos that I could literally count with my fingers. His best combo was where he emits gas and snaps his fingers in order to blast the enemies with an AOE skill, but even that attack didn't work most of the time, cause Swampfire would easily get disrupted by a mere nudge from a DNAlien or even those creepy-crawlies.
      • BigChill was an okay transformation. I like the skill where he could go underground and do an AOE spiked attack on his enemies (it's similar to one of Gwen's skill. more on that later). But anything else that BigChill could do, I don't really give a damn. And how come BigChill could get iced by a DNAlien? BigChill is already a walking ice-being! He should be immune to the cold! I get that he can't deal with the Heatblast DNAliens, but him being iced is a disgrace to his name.
      • Spidermonkey could've been a good transformation if not for the wall-crawling courses. I sort of liked that they took initiative to do courses like these in the game, but the execution was farce. His combo sets were also something left to be desired, cause most of the time, I couldn't even successfully make them. Even in the times that I could, the combos were meh. He's similar to XLR8 when it comes to size, so that meant he was also not hitting foes that accurately. And again, a good (many) set of combos would've been great for Spidermonkey (and all of the other transformations).
      • Jetray's combos were the best to use in most situations. His combo set was the most diverse, too. He had an aerial attack that worked half the time. He sort of had XLR8's whiplash move, but in order for you to do that skill, you had to successfully push three buttons (which didn't happen most of the time). And when it did, it wasn't really that much cool to use anyway. And doing the tedious combo again was just too much work. I hated how his double jump allowed me to soar through the air quickly...but also plummeted me to my death cause I always ended up missing the target platform.
      • Humungousaur is one of my most favorite transformations...in the show. In the game, not so much, cause he was too big and slow that I literally would go back to being Ben or Jetray whenever I needed to walk (and with how long the stages were, you end up wanting to walk fast). His combos weren't that great, I always just spammed the 'circle-square' combo that was basically a tackle attack that easily did the work on the enemies. His moment in the spotlight of having to destroy the DNAlien Towers was okay, but it would've been good to NOT have that be the final stage (more on that later).
  • I liked using Gwen more than Kevin.
    • Like I said awhile ago, Gwen has this AOE skill that is basically a mana wave that could damage several foes. Kevin can roll over and throw boulders from the ground...
    • Gwen's controls were fluid. Kevin was as hard as a rock (pun intended, cause he can absorb rocks).
      • Also, why have Kevin absorb these different minerals, if none of them are distinct from the other? And I hated how his powers depleted too quickly (or was that just because of the Hard Mode?).
    • We didn't get to play them that often throughout the game itself, either. I wish that there was an option to choose which character you would play as in each stage. Is that too much to ask?
  • The Final Battle should've been with the Tall High Breed (can't remember what they're called).
    • And that battle was even batter than the Vilgax battle from the previous game. I liked battling that High Breed more. You know why? Cause the buildup in the game was well executed, unlike the previous game's final boss. I love seeing Ben kicking Vilgax's ass, but in Protector of the Earth, he was just there in the final moment, so I didn't really feel like I was emotionally invested in beating the crap out of that Squid-head. But with the High Breed though, we get to see him in some of the cut-scenes in the game, so that in itself is buildup for that particular enemy.

Overall, I would say that I definitely liked playing Protector of Earth than this mediocre sequel of a game. I wish they could've really added more combos in the game. I wish that they have utilized Gwen and Kevin more. I wish that they could've switched Spidermonkey or BigChill or Humungousaur with Echo-Echo or Brainstorm or Chromastone. I liked that they were able to tell a good side-story in this game, but the game-play itself was tedious and too long to get through, that I feel like I've wasted my time on such a small package of a game.

I look forward to being able to play more than five transformations in the next Ben 10 game.

Score: 6/10

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