Xenophobe

"I really think whoever was responsible for this game must have been either drunk or stoned."

Intro
Ok, Sunsoft has made some pretty cool games I.E. Blaster Master, Journey to Silius and, if you're into that sort of thing, Gremlins II: The New Batch. But they also made some that were less cool I.E. Fester's Quest (absolutely horrible in my opinion), and now Xenophobe, which is, to put it bluntly, completely unentertaining and as far as I can tell, absolutely pointless. I'll explain later. FOr now, know only that Xenophobe is the kind of game one can easily fall asleep while playing.
Gameplay 2-10. They didn't really explain much in the instruction booklet, so what happens is that you're thrust into a strange alien land? with only a vague idea of what the hell you're supposed to be doing. You blow up aliens and collect items. Other than that you don't really do much. They didn't even give it a villain except the various little alien dudes.
Control ? Well, you jump with A, fire with B, move with the arrows and pause with Start. I guess that's pretty simple. It seems to work fairly well though. But that's not why I don't like the game, and yes, it is possible to screw up the functions of even a two-button NES controler. Hydlide is an excellent example of that.
Audio 3-10. It had potential. I popped in an NSF file on my computer and played the music. It could have been pretty cool, but noooo! The intro song is short and then there really isn't much else except for a few different versions of the intro song and then some fairly below average SFX. Besides, if the game is called Xenophobe, which is a word used to describe a person who has a deathly fear of anything alien, I'd have expected...well...more scary music. Well, we were not to be given such a thing. The few songs there are are much too...upbeat? No, they put you to sleep! The SFX weren't much better, just the standard bleeps and bloops. Well, no. They were just some blop sounds and a few beeps and thumps. Then there's this occasional roar sound or whatever it is. I guess it's supposed to be some alien, but it sounds kinda like Mario jumping in the original Donkey Kong for Atari, only it kinda sounded like he was jumping but he didn't really want to be. There's also this little tiny beep when you pause the game.
Story ? What can I say? You go through the areas blowing up stuff and collecting items. It didn't even say, ''Destroy the evil So-and-so or the world will end!'' I guess they realized they blunded when they made this game, so they gave it an aliens type story (or rather a lack thereof), to pass sort of explain what the hell they were doing. It's like they decided to make an entirely pointless game, but to satisfy the rules or whatever, they slapped together a vague story, gave it some bland gameplay and some bland and boring music and controls, put it all into an 8-bit NES cartridge, made...I dunno how many copies, put 'em in packages and shipped 'em out, saying, ''There you are.''
Challenge ? Well, since i only played around with it for a few minutes, it would be impossible for me to give an honest rating. I do find one challenge in the game though. Who here can actually sit down with it for a long time? I couldn't, that's for sure. If I did I'm sure I'd fall asleep.
Overall 3-10. Why a 3? Well, it wasn't quite horrible enough to deserve a 1. It's definitely a below average title though, and if you play around with it for too long you might just find yourself drifting off into that sleep I mentioned a few paragraphs ago. And who knows, your dreams might be filled with weird aliens and highly bland sound effects..no, annoying ones.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/25/02, Updated 03/01/03