Four Fat Chicks -- UFOs Review

UFOs

Review by Orb
June 2003

Can anyone explain my fascination with the odd and forgotten titles of H+a? This may indeed be one of life's true mysteries. What's even more interesting is the diversity in the style of games they published: Gord@k, a first-person point-and-click adventure; Mortalus, an action game; Gems of Darkness, a pure puzzle game later bought by Dreamcatcher and in Dreamcatcher's characteristic style renamed Jewels II, and this final one: UFOs.

UFOs is again different from the other H+a games—it is a third-person cartoon adventure. It seems to me, after many years of playing, that not all cartoon games are created equal. At the high end of the scale, we have classics such as Sam and Max Hit the Road, and at the opposite end of the scale, noxious tripe such as Toonstruck, Asterix or Virtual Springfield give us a mental game-playing wedgie. I'm happy to report UFOs falls into the former category.

UFOs is the story of an alien named Gnap who crash-lands his spaceship in a pigsty somewhere in the Ozarks. He must find replacement parts for the ship's broken engine so he can get home. That's pretty much the entirety of the story of UFOs, a third-person game most similar to Spaced Invaders, Sam and Max or Day of the Tentacle.

Along the way Gnap picks up a platypus that acts as a sidekick. The platypus does Gnap's bidding with the push of a button on Gnap's tiny pocket alien transmitter. The platypus also give the player a "platypus mode" where the little sucker can be used as an action to be taken to solve puzzles, most similar to the "use the bunny" feature in Sam and Max.

The game's design itself is really outstanding. The backgrounds are rendered in surprisingly intricate 3D detail, and over this are laid 2D line-drawn cartoon characters. This is a really engaging look, and it gives UFOs a design depth many other similar games drawn fully in 2D lack.

Puzzles are all inventory-based and are logical, albeit with the fairly silly objects that are de rigueur for a comedy game of this ilk. The inventory is stowed in a small handheld device, the same one used to move the platypus. Inventory use is tightly controlled; once used and no longer needed, items disappear (a design flaw in numerous other inventory-based games that's not present here), and there's maybe one time in the game that the number of inventory items exceeds six, which means no inventory scrolling either.

The humor in the game is a bit sardonic and twisted, something I quite enjoy, but some may not. When Gnap crash-lands his broken ship in the pigpen, the pigs dogpile into one shaking, squealing corner. If they are clicked on, Gnap raises his transmitter and hits the button; one squealing pig rises into the air and messily explodes, an eyeball bouncing off the ship. I laughed—you may be grossed out. But at least you have been warned.

The biggest minus to the game is its brevity. There are only five areas Gnap travels to. Each contains multiple areas to explore, but given the quality of the rendering and the clever writing it really made me wish that more money had been given to the designers to make the game longer. Don't get me wrong, you're not going to finish this in one sitting, it's just that it's well made enough that it would be nice if it were bigger.

This is a great straight adventure game for the adventure game fan, especially those folks that look forward to a cartoony game. The design is really clever, and the puzzles and overall gameplay are a lot of fun.