"80 levels of fun.... That you can finish in a little over an hour."

Pet Alien is both a blessing and a curse. It draws you in with impressive, balanced and creative gameplay mechanics yet never really evolves in complexity or difficulty. Once you've played the first 5-10 levels, you've more or less experienced most of what this game has to offer, and it's a shame, since the mechanics are quite fun in themselves.

The game gives you a set of characters, each with a specific skill they can use to interact with the environment in certain ways, that you use to maneuver around 80 levels that will have you hitting switches, pushing boxes, and avoiding traps in order to move on to the next level. Completing a level involves collecting the required amount of green gems, which in turn opens up the exit portal. levels include various platforms where you can switch into different characters, 5 in all, in order to utilize their skills.

The story itself is merely a backdrop to the gameplay and didn't have anything interesting to offer. I guess you have to save some kid named tommy by going through all of these puzzle filled levels, with a boss fight every 15 stages or so. Good enough for me. I wasn't anticipating it to have a serious story, and was more interested in the gameplay anyways.

The real disappointment however, is that even though this game offers you 80 levels, every single one of the can be completed between 1-3 minutes. There is no feeling of the game becoming gradually more complex and difficult as the game went on. The first few levels were ridiculously easy, then got a little bit more difficult, and then stayed that way until the end of the game. It's very very easy for a moderate gamer, not even a veteran, to breeze through this game in less than 2 hours, and that's with completing all 80 (a lot of levels are optional). It's a shame, like I said, because they have such a great gameplay mechanic to work with, it's just never truly realized and you're left wanting for so much more. The bosses themselves require 3 hits to defeat and are painfully easy and obvious. The final boss is just as easy as the first one.

I guess that it's meant to be a kids game and should be easier, but Pet Alien still feels like it had so much wasted potential in which it could have been an astounding sleeper hit.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 08/13/07