Defender

"Horrible."

'It is a nice tranquil day on earth but the tranquility is shattered by the surprise arrival of the Manti aliens. Your mission is to destroy all the aliens before the Manti leaders capture all of the humans for mutation.'

What kind of story is that? It was a nice, tranquil day, whatever that's supposed to mean, and all was well and good, until aliens arrived and started to capture the entire earth's population for ‘mutation'. Didn't we see the Manti coming? What about radar and rocket shields? Come to think of it, where did we get to know the Manti's intentions? How do we even know the things are called Manti? Since the entire earth's population is being captured for ‘mutation', who made up the name Manti? Questions, questions… I guess Outlook drew its inspiration from Starship Troopers. But in Starship Troopers, the aliens at least clearly looked like mantises. They had big fangs and pincers and made horrifying noises, but in this edition of Defender, the Manti look like, well, green blobs. I stared at the green blobs from all possible angles for over a minute, and I could not discover even a hint of mantis in there. One thing I found out about the Manti though is that they're fond of pets, because in every stage they bring some red parrots along that try to kill you as well.

Remember how much fun Defender was on the 2600? Some Tetris-like blocks made up the scenery in the background, the soil was always painted one monotonous shade, every object in the game made bleeping noises and your ship looked like…a bunch of pixels. But you accepted all that, used your imagination and enjoyed the game's fantastic and addictive gameplay.

All of this nostalgia has been replaced with looks and sounds supposedly more modern and therefore more pleasing. Nothing less is true. The game looks and feels, I can think of no other word for it, crap. The 2600 version may have been ugly, but it felt right. It was involving, felt complete, as if every piece was in the right place. The GBA version has none of this. It feels fake, stupid, awkward and rushed.

The concept of the game hasn't changed much. You still shoot down aliens in your little spacecraft. The main ‘upgrade' lies in the looks of the game. The Tetris-block background is no more; images of earth and space have replaced it. Your little pixelly spaceship has become an identifiable object. The aliens that once were blobs still have no clearly recognizable limbs. However, they do explode violently when you shoot them down. It's just plain stupid. The game breathes no atmosphere at all. It just doesn't feel right. You now have four different ships to choose from, some with better weapons than others and some with better shields than others, but whatever ship you choose, it doesn't feel like it makes a difference. Moreover, the controls are incredibly delayed. When changing direction your ship now has to ‘turn around' instead of just changing direction instantly. I know it's more realistic, but it's so awkward and erases all the smoothness from the gameplay. On top of that, the aliens just fly around stupidly. They do not chase you, they're just minding their own business and if you don't approach them you never even get hit. You have to choice but to get close though, since shooting down all the aliens in a stage means completing your mission.

I find it very hard to exactly describe what's wrong with this game. Maybe that's because everything is wrong. Why is there even a story? A real Defender game shouldn't even have a story. It shouldn't even have mission descriptions! We only want to shoot down all the blobs on the screen! And why is the artwork so incredibly poorly done? The GBA can handle some, so do it properly! The ships look ugly, the aliens are either blobs or parrots, the backgrounds look fake; and why the hell do the aliens explode anyway? And then I haven't even mentioned the ‘people' you need to rescue in some missions. They float in outer space. No spacesuits. Red and yellow flashing human-like figures equal in size to a small asteroid in the background, and half the size of your ship, that's what they are. What happened to scale? It all feels terribly, terribly wrong. And I can't get over the exploding aliens.

One last thing I should mention, the game does not contain music, not a single piece! We'll have to make do with the ‘pewpew' sound effects of bullets and the screams, yes, screams, of dying aliens. The screams are very similar to the sounds John Rambo produces while machine-gunning an entire bandit camp. What the hell was Outlook thinking?

It's hard to put my feelings about this game into words. Anyone who has ever played this edition of Defender will know what I mean straight away. Everything about it feels terribly, terribly wrong; stay far away from it. You're much better off playing the original or a good remake; the ones for GameCube or XBOX will do fine.

~ Written 02/08/2009
© Jeroen Geurtsen (Jerom88), 2009.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 02/10/09

Game Release: Defender (EU, 03/14/03)