E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

"Why did they bother remaking this game?"

Back in the early '80's Atari released E.T. for the Atari 2600. Since the game was produced in four-weeks, the quality was abysmal. Not only that, Atari produced way too many copies and sold only a handful. The rest of the copies were crushed and buried in the deserts of New Mexico. A couple of decades later, Universal Pictures decided to put E.T. the Extra Terrestrial on DVD. To go along with it, Newkidco decided to revive E.T. for the Game Boy Advance. Is the GBA version suffered the same fate as the Atari version?

Story: 5/10
Like the movie, it's about an alien named E.T. who happens to examine some plants in the planet Earth. However, due to unexpected circumstances, his buddies left E.T. behind in the planet Earth. It's up to Elliot, to get E.T. back home. So, if you watched the movie, you should get an idea how the story unfolds.

Gameplay: 2/10
Unlike the Atari 2600 version, the basic concept of the game is more accurate due to today's technology. The stages actually looked like the ones in the movie version. At times when you are navigating through the stage, the control gets a bit clunky. The movement of the character takes a little while to respond. The overall gameplay mechanics is horrid. Almost any action that E.T. does, he loses life slowly. The enemies and the AI are fairly stupid. Also, on certain stages, you get to play as E.T. and Elliot simultaneously. If you go too fast, the other character gets stuck on the wall. It doesn't follow you unless you stay close to the character and approach slowly. It's very inconvenient if you are trying to finish up the stage quickly.

The level design is pitiful. Most of the stages are basically collect a certain number of objects. Collecting objects are horrible when navigating through a huge labyrinth. Most of the rooms and objects look identical as the previous area. Fortunately, there are a few stages that takes a break from the labyrinth such as figuring out a puzzle or a side-scrolling stage. The stage designs are so bland and generic that might bore you very quickly. The difficulty is fairly easy. Getting past the enemies is very easy. All you have to do go around them. Even the human enemies are a pushover. If you can avoid enemies very well, then this game is a snap. Despite game mechanics are much better than the Atari 2600 counterpart, they haven't done enough to make it more interesting.

Graphics: 2/10

The graphics is muggy. The colors are very bland. Once you see the first set of stages, the rest looks exactly the same except they added more stuff. You are going to see the same objects and enemies throughout the game.

Sounds: 1/10

The sounds aren't any better either. The soundtrack of E.T. is very uninteresting. The music sounds a lot like the watered-down version of the elevator music except with beeps and bloops. It's so bland that you might fall asleep during the game. Also, the sound effects are also bad. Every time you trek the stage with E.T., he'll often say that he wants to go home or groans.

Replay Value: Low

Once you are done with the game, it's going to sit and collect dust due to the fact that there is only one mode.

Rent or Buy:

Neither, like the previous installment, avoid this game like a plague. If you are curious how bad it is, I suggest try not to waste too much money or not get any money involved.

Final Word:
E.T. for the Atari 2600 was one of the factors that led to a Video Game Crash. You sometimes wonder why this game was remade despite the negative criticisms it got. Although the remake was much more polished than the Atari 2600 version, it was not enough to redeem itself.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 01/10/07, Updated 01/29/07