Future Games Network -- Amazons and Aliens (PC) Review

Amazons & Aliens (PC)
Published by Simon & Schuster Interactive
In My Humble Opinion
Paul "Sly" Wolf

Here is the much delayed Amazons & Aliens review. I don’t think I have ever had less fun playing a game — well maybe Exploding Lips would give it a run for gaming pain. In the beginning, storks (you know, the birds) fly through the great void depositing various races throughout the cosmos. They did an OK job, at least as good as you can expect from birds, that is. Three of the higher races were to be populated on different planets in order to grow and evolve without interference from any other race. But on the way to each planet, the storks were distracted by an intergalactic strip club floating through space. This explains how three of the master races ended up on the closest planet to the club, which is where the game begins.

Amazons & Aliens (A& A) is a basic RTS with three very different looking races, which you can take control of in 20 missions per race. I have no clue why anyone would want 20 missions in a game like this, but here you have them. I started with the mushroom–farming Pimmons, where I began banging my skull against the wall attempting to figure out what I was supposed to be doing. After many hours of dealing with food shortages and starving my villagers to death, I decided to try my luck with the Amazons.

The Amazons like to bake cakes and fight. And all too often, half of my village would be ravaged as the warriors just stood around. I don’t know if it was bad AI, or no AI, but it was frustrating all the same. So many hours invested over the course of three days, and I am nowhere, meaning I now have to shame myself, and my rep as a gamer, by actually reading the game’s directions! An interesting read, and if you still want to punish yourself with A& A after this review, read the directions first (they help you get at least an hour or two into the game before you hit the wall).

I didn’t bother to play the last A& A race, after getting nowhere with the first two — I don’t understand what happened. My village would have plenty of food and money one minute, and then next, all of the other nations would call off trade at the exact same moment. I would then either starve or get killed because my warriors ran in circles, and they only began to fight when a baddy got right up next to them. At least losing battles is a quick aspect of this game.

This brings up another problem — the game is way too slow. You can sit on your butt reading a book and miss nothing with your unit taking forever just to move to the other side of town. All units move too slowly and have the worst pathing AI I have ever seen (and I have played more than my fair share of the early Westwood titles).

The only thing I can say about the game is that the graphics are funny and well drawn. However, what good are funny graphics when you’re running needles through your lips trying to divert yourself from smashing your computer into pieces, as you try to put an end to the painful game experience some way, some how? Maybe if I had more time, perhaps weeks, to mess around with the game and figure out how to stay alive long enough to complete a mission, I would have given the game a better score. But why do that when I could have more fun washing my cat?