‘Alien Chaos 3D’ Review (3DS)
“Really Shooter and his mother, Mama, run a cleaning and demolition business, and recently saved the world from an alien robot invasion. Now the robots are back and they’ve kidnapped Mama! Whatever they want her for, Really decides to take the fight to the robots, and heads for the nearest house leading up to one of their spaceships. Since he’ll inherit the business one day, Really Shooter has a compulsive habit of cleaning up whatever mess he leaves behind and this is one messy guy.”
A sequel to the little-played 2012 XBLA release Mama & Son: Clean House, Alien Chaos 3D is a download-only title for the Nintendo 3DS from publishers Reef Entertainment that plays very much like Bubble Bobble with guns instead of bubbles and alien robots instead of cutesy animals.
The gameplay is simple – this single-screen shooter sees you blast all the aliens that appear out of various portals scattered throughout each level/screen. However it’s not quite that simple. You see your weapon(s) run out of ammo and the only way to fill them up is to sweep up the broken parts of robots and other trash strewn around the place and push the rubble in rubbish bins, which will then reward you buy dropping bullets for your gun from outlets at the top of the screen. But bullets alone will not save you… No, when the going gets tough, the tough must clean even more! You see Really has a special power that, when unleashed, causes a huge explosion which will wipe out all the enemies within it’s blast radius. However to charge up your special power you must scrub down the walls of the room you’re in to remove the mess left from killing the alien robots – only doing so leaves you incredibly vulnerable to attack!
And so Alien Chaos 3D continues: kill and clean, kill and clean. There is some increase in difficulty as the waves of alien robots get faster and the action more frantic but for experienced gamers there’s nothing here that will be too taxing. Which is a shame, because that also means the game isn’t that long either – it’s easily completable within one afternoon and even with the Challenge Mode and StreetPass options available, I would have still liked to see more game for the money.
Despite the short amount of playtime, Alien Chaos 3D is still a excellent, fun puzzle-shooter – perfect for playing on the daily commute. The game is available to buy now on Nintendo’s eShop from publishers Reef Entertainment.
**** 4/5
