War of the Worlds

It's always the same with these alien invasion movies. There's innocent old mankind, sitting around minding his old business on his out of the way planet, not really hurting anyone else in the galaxy, when all of a sudden these blood thirsty creatures drop out of the sky and unleash havoc. But what about the aliens perspective eh? Take a look through their buggy-eyes and things look rather different. Things are getting a tad cramped back on Zog and who could blame them for looking for a holiday home on the quieter side of the universe? Earth's got a nice young sun, beaches, lots of food just walking around, plenty of atmosphere. It's not as if they're disrupting intelligent life is it? Well, not on the basis of the transmissions they've been picking up - Big Brother, Will Young and that bloomin' Crazy Frog! Besides, mankind aren't doing such a bang up job looking after the place…

Alright, so we might have over-empathised a tad there, but the truth is there are always two sides to any story (three if you count the honest truth) and, fittingly, the mobile version of War of the Worlds gives you the opportunity to explore another perspective to that offered by Steven Spielberg in this summer's film. There's still the same action with massive tripod creatures stalking through the world's biggest cities destroying everything and everybody in their path with their death-rays and tentacles. It's just that this time around you're on their side. That's right, War of the Worlds casts you as one of the invaders, controlling a mighty tripod as it moves left-to-right across a series of nicely rendered 2D cityscapes. Your task is to crush, maim and destroy all evidence of human life and you have an incredible array of destructive powers to achieve this, including a fiery death ray, tentacles that can pick up objects and fling them around and a special smart bomb. If all else fails you can just stomp on things.

However, you'll soon discover that the human race isn't quite the pushover that Tom Cruise and co. made it appear in the movie. You might be bigger than the average Joe, but the humans have got an advantage in numbers and though the weapons may be primitive they can still cause damage. Yes, sadly you don't seem to have picked the 2005 model tripod with air-con, satellite navigation or the impregnable force field as standard, which the on-screen invaders enjoyed. Ho-hum. The progressively more troublesome waves of helicopters, tanks, planes and boats that are hurled in your path will slowly sap your power and, the lower your power bar, the less powerful weaponry you have at your disposal (you move slower, too). To make matters worse, those horrible earthlings have also managed to engineer some special super-weapons (huge tanks and submarines) that arrive at the end of each cleared cityscape and prove a sterner test, especially as they have to be dispatched within a tight time limit.

This means that whilst the first few levels prove relatively simple as your extreme firepower comfortably outguns the earth defences, as you progress through the 13 levels to the tougher cities (from Osaka to London and New Jersey) faster reactions and more tactical approach is required in taking out the biggest threats first (mines and fighter planes) and avoiding falling bombs or missiles. The latter is no mean feat as though the controls of movement and firing work pretty well (left and right on the thumbpad to move, up and down to aim the weaponry), the machine itself every bit as clunky and slow to respond as you'd expect several million tons of alien metal to be.

The presentation of the game is impressive, with atmospheric sound in the main intro, a smart newsreader effect as you advance levels, a superb loping animation on the tripod itself and loads of nice visual details throughout (the people swimming for their lives after you destroy a building, the other tripods appearing in the background). But the big question here is how much fun is it playing the bug-eyed guys? Loads, as it happens. Just being able to crush buildings under foot and hurl tanks at oncoming planes provides great satisfaction to begin with, but even when that novelty wears off there are some great innovations to keep you happy. The tentacles open up your choice of attacks hugely, allowing you to pick up vehicles or mines and hurl them back at your aggressors or sweep up survivors and absorb their essence for a little extra power. Then there's the 'chain reaction' mechanic that allows you to take out a whole wave of airborne attackers by picking off the right plane and some inventive challenges like the one that sees you having to knock helicopters out of the sky in order to destroy an otherwise inaccessible ferry below.

Sadly, like the invaders themselves there is a limit on the staying power of the challenge and it's questionable whether you'd want to return to try a harder level after beating the game once, but whilst it holds you in it's steely three-fingered grip, War of the Worlds undeniably makes an impact.