GamersTemple: "Yes, lots of older games got by just fine on this premise. I'm inclined to call Alien Force out, though, because of all the things I wish the game had taken advantage of. First and foremost are the transformations. Each one has different powers and even different personalities, but the game will rarely force you to use any of them if you don't want to. I would have liked to see some enemies or puzzles that could only have been activated by the right monster, or even upgradeable powers for each that could have included some backtracking for those going for all the game's items. Any of these could have saved Alien Force from being the game it ended up being - top to bottom, left to right gameplay with nothing worth mentioning in the middle, kind of like Dan Brown's DaVinci Code in video game form (take that popular fiction!).
I mentioned at the beginning that I enjoyed this game, and I hate to admit it, but it was kind of fun for a bit. I was, and still am, a big fan of the beat-em-up genre pre-PS1 and Nintendo 64. Double Dragon, Batman Returns, River City Ransom, the aforementioned Final Fight and Ninja Turtles… these games were my bread and butter for a long, long time. I suppose I took to Alien Force because of its simple nature. So many games are now built around online modes, hundreds upon thousands of collectable items, new difficulty levels, achievements (or trophies)… it felt nice to slide back into the button-mashing battles of the 8 and 16 bit era."
