Many of you may be familiar with the Nickelodeon cartoon Ben 10, some of you may not. Whether you know the cartoon or not, we have you covered because I am familiar with the cartoon and April is not. After playing through a couple of levels , we quickly realized it doesn’t matter if you know the series or not, Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction is shaping up to be a fun game.
The game is based on the cartoon called Ben 10: Ultimate Alien, which is about Ben Tennyson, a ten-year old who finds an alien pod on a camping trip and discovers a device called an Omnitrix. The Omnitrix allows Ben to shift into the form of various alien entities, giving him their powers. Ultimate Alien is the continuation of the original series that catches up with Ben five years after the events of the first series, so he is growing up.
Ben 10 is a third-person action-adventure game. While there is some backtracking and exploration, the game is pretty straight forward with no hub level or large overworld to traverse. You progress through the game by solving puzzles and fighting enemies, including mini-boss and boss battles. The puzzle elements are not overly difficult yet there are plenty to solve. You are required to use the abilities of the different aliens to solve the puzzles and advance. The puzzles were relatively easy from what we saw, but there were a couple of challenges.
You can take the form of up 17 aliens throughout the course of the game, although you will only have access to only four of them in each level. Some levels require a certain alien’s powers to progress so the game automatically chooses those for you. Any of the other four slots may be filled with aliens of your choice. This allows players to play their favorite alien forms or experiment with others to enhance the experience of the game. Also, you can switch between your alien forms without having to shift back into Ben. This is a first for the series, and streamlines the gameplay quite a bit. The different forms were different as they each have their strengths and weaknesses, and it was fun exploring the various aspects of each.
Ben and his alien forms will travel mourned the world to find an ancient alien artifact that will stop a mysterious cosmic storm that is threatening all of humanity. You will get to see Paris, Tokyo, China, Rome and more, solving puzzles and battling enemies using Ben’s upgraded Omnitrix, called the Ultimatrix. While the environments are great for puzzle elements and gameplay, I didn’t get a feel for the locales we were in, but it didn’t really matter.
The new Ultimatrix allows you to play as aliens such as AmpFibian, Armodrillo, and Terraspin, which are featured in Ben 10 Ultimate Alien. It also allows players to activate “ultimate” versions of certain aliens during combat. These forms are incredibly powerful and are helpful during some of the more chaotic battles in the game. In fact, these parts of the game were probably the most fun. You don’t have to worry about getting hit by the throngs of enemies coming at you, you just bash away at them as they come at you wave after wave. You feel like Godzilla in Tokyo.
When fighting you have melee and ranged attacks. By using your basic attacks, you fill up a meter that allows you to use special attacks. Combat also features a counter-attack system that is like the one featured in The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker. When an icon appears above your enemy and you hit a certain button, you perform a scripted counter-attack. Overall, the combat was decent. I ended up evading most of my attackers by running around and waiting for an opportune time to strike.
Throughout each level, if you destroy certain objects, you will collect “experience” orbs that allow you to upgrade your alien forms by enhancing their strength, speed, defense and special attacks. My limited time with the game made it difficult for me to tell how much difference upgrading your alien makes, but its a nice feature to include.
It looks like the developer worked hard on improving the game from previous versions. As an action adventure game, the time we spent with the game was a lot of fun and had a little bit of a challenge to it. I thing fans of the series will enjoy this game a lot as you get to play with many of the aliens featured in the series. Combat is fast and frenetic, and getting to play the “ultimate” aliens is a blast.
Ben 10 Ultimate Alien: Cosmic Destruction will be released on October 5th, 2010, and will be available on the XBOX 360, Playstation 3 and the Wii. The XBOX and PS3 version will include exclusive aliens: Rath for the XBOX 360 and Four Arms for the PS3. There are also versions coming out for the PS2, PSP, and the Nintendo DS, but we didn’t get to see or play these versions.
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