Stupid Invaders

by UBI Soft

Product Details

• Shipping: This item is also available for shipping to select countries outside the U.S.
• ASIN: B00004ZBQA
• Media: CD-ROM
• Release Date: March 9, 2001
• Average Customer Review: 3.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #46,291 in Video Games (See Top 100 in Video Games)
• Discontinued by manufacturer: Yes

Product Description

Platform: PC

DailyRadar Review

With all the talk of adventure games being a dying genre, it's worth noting that several titles have been released recently, and more are in the works. While the titles aren't as prolific as in years past, gamers have still seen the release of such excellent works as Escape From Monkey Island and The Longest Journey. Unfortunately, Xilam and Ubi Soft have decided to add Stupid Invaders to the list of titles in the shrinking genre, so perhaps death isn't such a bad choice after all.Years ago, five aliens crash-landed on Earth. Etno, Candy, Bud, Stereo and Gorgious hid in a deserted house until the spacecraft was repaired, and finally that time has come. The player's job is to guide the five until they can return to their home planet while trying to evade the evil Dr. Sakarine and his hitman. Stupid Invaders is a traditional adventure game, with puzzles of the "use X on Y" variety that adventure gamers are familiar with, and the interface -- a hand that changes to show what is possible with an object -- is easy to understand. The bottom of the screen also explains what something is and whether the alien can interact with it, but is occasionally inconsistent, especially when indicating movement. Most of the time it would show "Go here" or "This way" or such when it was possible to change screens, but sometimes the words weren't there and other times clicking them did nothing. The only way to get the alien to go to that side of the screen was to walk it until it moved close enough to "catch" the words.

The graphics are absolutely stunning. Colorful and quirky, the game looks better than most Saturday morning cartoon series. The integrated cinematics alone are almost worth the price of the game, and each of the more than 500 game screens is perfect in style. To complement the graphics, the music and sound effects add ambience fitting to the area. In a laboratory, the music is reminiscent of a 1950s science fiction movie, while an elevator has, appropriately enough, elevator music. The voice acting is also top-notch, a difficult feat in gaming made more so by the dim-witted nature of the aliens and by dialog of such caliber as, "Your butthole is going to take me back to my planet."

The humor in the game is hit or miss, either laugh-out-loud funny or grimacingly bad. In fact, some of the jokes would probably make Beavis and Butthead cringe in disgust, and one, an implied rape, is disturbing. As a general rule of thumb, players who think the funniest thing Jim Carrey has ever done is his butt-talking routine will likely find Stupid Invaders right up their alley.

At the heart of any adventure title is its puzzles, and Stupid Invaders does the job sufficiently most of the time. Some of the puzzles are very easy to solve, especially for anyone even remotely familiar with the genre. Others require some thought, and those are the most enjoyable. Too bad so many of the puzzles require random guessing and pixel-hunting, taking the fun out of solving them. Even worse, and by far the most annoying aspect of the entire game, is that many actions will kill the alien and end the game. That's right, an adventure game that kills, although in quite amusing ways. Most of the time it's impossible to know that a particular action will end the game until it's too late, so excessive use of saving is actually necessary to keep from repeating sections. This fear of death definitely cuts down on the exploration and "try anything" approach to adventure gaming that most players are familiar with. It's almost as if the developers wanted to punish players for playing their game. This is the primary reason that Stupid Invaders gets a Miss instead of a Hit.

Some small problems contribute to this lackluster title. Reloading and saving are done with the F1 and F2 keys respectively. Players who jump right into the game without reading the manual may not learn this until it's too late. Towards the end, the game crashed to the desktop several times, but never in the same spot twice. Some of the characters the aliens can interact with have dialog options to choose from, but after going through all the options once, if players accidentally click on the character again, they have to go through every one of the options again. Finally, for a four-CD game, it's too short. It's possible to finish the game in fewer than 15 hours. Overall, Stupid Invaders is an adventure title that just isn't as much fun as it should be. But it's plenty stupid.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Extremely funny, yet somewhat disappointing, March 19, 2001

By 

ralphb - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stupid Invaders (CD-ROM)

"Finally," I thought, "a worthy successor to my beloved 'Day of the Tentacle'." The title and the funny characters alone made me buy "Stupid Invaders" without having read any reviews. And, to make this clear, I do not regret it. The jokes are hilarious, although somewhat immature (potential players need to be able to see the humour in sex change operations and cow dung). The game is rather short and can be completed over the weekend; think of it as watching an interactive movie rather than an adventure game.

The greatest shortcoming of "Stupid Invaders" is, alas, the game play. The interaction of the characters with their environment is very limited: each room has no more than a handful of items to manipulate. As your inventory never contains more than four items, solving puzzles simply becomes "apply everything to everything." The puzzle quality varies: most puzzles are logical (you discover an item and you know what to use it for), some even ingenious, others are merely bizarre (you hit a huge metal door with a metal hook, which makes loud clanking noises but doesn't open it; you then smash a nearby pipe simply because you can, then you hit the door again which subsequently explodes -- only then do you realize that the pipe released gas and hitting the door made a spark etc. etc.). If you become stuck (NOBODY will have the patience to figure out the teleportation room), you can look up the solution in the game manual. You cannot "misuse" items, but unlike in "Tentacle", it is possible to kill your character by taking a wrong turn, so save often! After a while, I found the user interface to be somewhat clunky: for example, you have to use the keyboard to bring up the inventory.

Executive summary: a highly entertaining little game, but don't expect a second "Tentacle."

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars I'd Give this Game One and a Half Stars If I Could!, August 23, 2001

By 

Connor Shivers (Salem, OH USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Stupid Invaders (CD-ROM)

THis was the most offensive, lame, and, well, STUPID game I've ever played!!!! First of all, the swearing, disgusting humor, and inappropriate descriptions get so frequent and annoying it isn't funny! I only played this game up to where you get out of the bathroom of the abandoned house, but from my friend's description of the REST of the game, well, let's just it pitches a perfect no-hitter to those of you like me who have to tolerate inappropriate humor but hate it(there are others like me out there, aren't there?) This game is a total waste of money. Don't wait up for a sequel.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The name says it all, January 18, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Stupid Invaders (CD-ROM)

How can I describe a game like Stupid Invaders? Well, picture a colorful, animated world, populate it with colorful, animated characters, then destroy it with bathroom humor and tons of bugs and you have Stupid Invaders.

I'd describe the plot, but there doesn't seem to be one. Seriously. A spaceship containing five misfit aliens crashlands on Earth, and it's up to you to lead them home. Sound easy? Well that's because it is. The game contains the usual amount of "puzzles" for an adventure game, but they are all really, really easy and the solution is never more than a few clicks away.
The colorful graphics and constant barrage of jokes suggest that this game desperately wants to be a monkey island clone, but it fails on so many levels. One particular way Stupid Invaders falls short of its goal is the humor. I happen to be rather immature, so a few of the jokes made me laugh out loud. But the majority of society has much better taste than me, so unless you are a fan of fourth-grade potty mouth humor, I'd stay away from this one. On top of all this are the incredible number of bugs that occur during this game and the space it requires. (a whopping gigabyte!)
"So," you are probably asking yourself. "If you didn't like it this much, then why didn't you give it a lower score?" The answer is that Stupid Invaders is useful as entertainment, but not as a game. As I mentioned before, several jokes had me cracking up. Also, the graphics are incredibly crisp and the video sequences are amazing.
But probably the best thing about this game are the characters. There are five aliens that you alterately control: Etno (the geinius), Stereo (the nerd) Candy(the transevestite), Gorgeous (the gruff but caring cook), and Bud (the really stupid one). They may be stereotypical, but the voices are of such great quality that you overlook the stereotypes. Plus, each alien has an amusing little touch that keeps things interesting(Stereo has two heads, Etno sounds appropriately British).
Over all, if hideously easy eye candy is not your cup of tea, you might as well pick up The Longest Journey or Lighthouse. But if you are willing to lower your standards for two or three hours(since that's how long it will take to beat this game), then Stupid Invaders is for you.

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