Men in Black: Alien Assault

At the time, Men in Black was a pretty decent film, but it's one of those 'instant classics' that's been severely ravaged by time. Why, then, after all these years, has Ojom decided to revive the collapsed adventures of the MiB?

If I did manage to figure that answer out, it's somehow been erased from my memory. The phone's screen did flash really brightly earlier on, and when I looked up I was several levels ahead and the freezer had totally defrosted. How weird is that? Unfortunately, even after my zonk-out, the game didn't seem to have improved.

Men in Black: Alien Assault is certainly a long enough affair, with a grand plethora of isometric levels. The gameplay within these levels, however, sees almost no variation or evolution as the game progresses, and limps along at a slow enough pace for the experience to feel twice as long as it really is.

Taking on the role of Agent Jay, it's your task to rid the city streets of bored aliens who've broken their curfew. For a mostly unexplained reason, the aliens are randomly wandering around, scaring people a little bit and adding to the paperwork load of the poor MiB.

Removing this xenophobic menace entails shooting them down with your ray-gun, which comes equipped with an auto-targeting system to circumvent the difficulty of aiming with digital controls.

The character is naturally restricted to four directions, so the fact that the gun locks onto the nearest target in front of you is quite helpful. That said, it does reduce the challenge somewhat and means that shooting is really just a case of facing in the general direction and jabbing the fire button without care.

Various platforming mechanics also come into play as the simplistic puzzle elements require, though they don't go much beyond pushing boxes around and blowing up obstructive barrels.

One nice touch is the necessity to neuralise any civilians who catch sight of an alien and descend into panic. Catching up with these crazed citizens and blanking their memory before the 'panic meter' runs out adds some degree of tension and dynamism to the proceedings, though not enough to really save the show.

On top of its lacklustre gameplay, Alien Assault also struggled to run with any kind of vigour on our test K750i (although you can safely assume that more modern handsets will fare better). As the number of onscreen characters grew, the already sedate walking pace slowed to a heavy-footed meander, robbing the game of what little vitality it had gradually mustered.

A decent enough looking game, Alien Assault can't escape the fact that it's a throwback to a mostly forgotten movie that's been lining the DVD bargain bins for a decade. Ultimately, all it's done is made us remember why film tie-ins have such a hard time convincing gamers they can be good.