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Aliens vs. Pearsons
Product: Aliens in the Attic
Company: Playlogic
Date: 06/11/2009
Avaliable On:

With the new Fox movie, Aliens in the Attic, slated to be released at the end of July, the companion games from Playlogic were on display at E3. Well actually, only the DS version was playable, while the PC, Wii and PS2 versions were talked about briefly during my meeting with the company.

Due to legal issues and 20th Century Fox's desire to keep a lot of plot details about the movie under wraps, the demo team was pretty tight-lipped. What I could find out was that the Pearson family is heading to their vacation home, only to find out it is infested with aliens who are going to use it as their invasion point for the whole planet. So now, the three kids have to do whatever they can to stop the little green guys from getting a foothold in their house, because from there, it's a full scale attack.

The game is being released for the DS, Wii, PC and PS2. The DS version has you following the kids around through the five sections of the house, but the other versions will actually be from the aliens' perspective. Unfortunately, like I said above, none of those were available to play, but here is what I saw on the DS.

While running through the house, I encountered your pretty basic platformer puzzles requiring me to make some pretty strange jumps, but with the ability to switch between each of the three kids, I was able to perform various other moves as well. While one character can jump higher than the others, he is a pacifist and doesn't have any fighting moves. Meanwhile, the other two have different types of weapons. Controlling the kids was pretty basic and used the standard face-button layout, but you could also use the stylus to aim your weapons at the various bad guys invading the area. Basically, where the stylus is on the screen is the direction your character will shoot, so you have a full 360 degree shooting radius.

Like I said, there wasn't really a whole lot to go on here. The few minutes of gameplay that I got to experience made it seem like a fun title to go along with a nice family-friendly game, so if you kids out there end up liking the movie, then I'm sure this game will also be appealing to you.

J.R. Nip aka Chris Meyer

GameVortex PSIllustrated