Stupid Invaders

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Platforms:	PC, Mac, Dreamcast
Publisher:	UbiSoft
Developer:	Xilam
Genres:	Adventure / Point and Click
Release Date:	February 22, 2001
Game Modes:	Singleplayer

Fart jokes from outer space!

Five stupid aliens of various colors, shapes, and sizes were on their way from Sam’s Club to their home planet when their space ship crash landed on Earth, and took up residence in an abandoned house. Clueless, they believed that they would be able to fix the ship within a matter of days. Several years later and they were still at it. An evil scientist got wind of their existence, and turns most of them into a block of ice. Not only are they frozen, but also the ice block is attached via various hoses and tubes to a fart machine that pipes all sorts of different and melodious farts into their environment at the flick of a lever.

Bud, the tall, orange, and probably most endearing alien escapes the ice attack, and the game opens with him locked in the first of seemingly thousands of bathrooms. Such is the general trend of Stupid Invaders, a fairly standard item-based puzzle adventure laced with sophomoric humor. When he finds his frozen companions, Bud announces with great joy, “Don’t panic guys, I’ve seen this all before in a Chuck Norris (pronounced ‘Noreece’) film. In the end, everyone who’s frozen in the ice dies a horrible death in a huge bonfire!”

You begin as Bud, but will eventually play as all five of the aliens as the story progresses. Etno (the purple one who suspiciously resembles a dildo) is the intellectual leader of the group. Stereo is the two-headed red guy, and perhaps has the least defined personality. His charm lies in the fact that one head is often deeply engrossed in something while the other head is busy doing something else. Gorgious is the large blue ape-like creature – he is the least genteel of the bunch, and is extremely protective of the little green guy with the large head, Candy.

Stupid Invaders has a lot going for it, with over 500 locations, nice graphics, esoterically humorous dialogue, an interesting, ambient score including an extremely tacky (on purpose) elevator-music arrangement of La Marseillaise. The cartoon graphics are nothing less than brilliant, colorful and bold, with a surprise around every corner. Stupid Invaders tries very, very hard to make you like it — kind of like a sad wide-eyed puppy who does his business on an expensive carpet.

For the most part, the puzzles are well integrated in Stupid Invaders, but there are quite a few non-intuitive ones. Two are downright outrageous enough to merit dishonorable mention, but for different reasons. One involves a maze the size of Montana, which requires that you navigate it hopelessly for longer than is really necessary. All of a sudden a snail arrives to save you, and the resulting ride on its back to exit the maze is completely interminable. The joke is that the snail—who sped up to you like a rocket and who warns you that the ride might be too speedy for you—is, um, slow. All right, point taken in one minute, maybe two.

There are graphics glitches in various places that take you from a fully rendered scene into a palette-shifted scene of “static-filled mush,” and one location appears to be half rendered as you walk through it. The navigation tags indicate “This way,” and “Back,” but they are not consistent. On occasion, you can click on a navigation tag, but it takes you nowhere at all. The game also crashes often, sometimes apparently randomly, other times after using an item or just clicking on something you shouldn’t have.

Stupid Invaders has a lot of bathrooms, too much farting, too much phallic art, and too much double-entendre-wannabe content for you sophisticated King’s Quest adventure gaming types. Luckily, the number of players who have retained a passion for the stupid and silly is probably great enough to supply a good audience for Stupid Invaders.