Game Review: Ben 10 Battle Ready

Yes, really.

Ben 10: Battle Ready (the site just generically calls it "Battle Ready"-the Ben 10 part is assumed) is obviously based on the Ben 10 cartoon and toy franchise.

And if you think I'd be embarrassed to talk about it, there's a guy who's in his mid-thirties or so I know of who thinks the show is cool, so no.

I don't really know much about Ben 10 beyond 1) it's a cartoon that seems to be rather popular, and 2) the main character can turn into a bunch of different aliens with superpowers who are kind of interesting (though admittedly cartoony).

This game is all about the latter aspect, and that makes it pretty fun.

Here's how you look when you start the game.

Pretty boring, let's be honest.

By simply hitting the X key and holding it down, however, you can transform into one of ten different "alien forms." This one is called Diamondhead.

Each alien has a distinct appearance, and many of them have distinct powers. (Diamondhead lacks strongly distinct powers-he is one of three whose only distinction is shooting projectiles, and one of the others, Heatblast, is mostly better at it than he is.)

When I say this, some of them are big...

...while others are small.

(Incidentally, Fourarms there can take most enemies out with a single attack, while little Grey Matter can't even break most scenery.) Each alien form has a stage that you must complete while locked into that form before you can reach the final stage, which is a straightforward (albeit painfully hard) boss battle with a giant robot.

The structures of the stages are partially determined by the abilities of the aliens you become for them-Ghostfreak has lots more walls in inconvenient places for him to phase through...

...and XLR8 ("acc|el|er|ate"-yes, really) has lots of wide-open straightaways that exploit his incredible speed (which unfortunately can't be captured with a screenshot).

The game involves searching for these stages in a "pre" stage where there is a time limit on transformations, using various alien forms to fight off enemies or reach otherwise inaccessible areas. Some of the individual stages are fun (XLR8's is joy) while others are torturous (Wildmutt's attack is clumsy and unwieldy, the enemies are more frequent in his stage than in others [especially likely to double-team you, which is instant death for poor Wildmutt], and there are too many exploding barrels, great friend to a ranged attacker but mortal enemy to a short-ranged klutz like Wildmutt). Some stages feature things irrelevant elsewhere in the game-Gray Matter's stage is a tiny environment matched to his size (graphically different from the rest of the game), and the enemies are small enough that he's only slightly less powerful than Fourarms, while Ripjaw, an amphibious form, has an underwater stage.

Hilariously, this all takes place in a factory that appears to have an enormous multi-section basement and at least two distinct sewer zones underneath it. (It also has cardboard display stands that are harder to destroy than barrels and boxes, and about as difficult to destroy as printing presses.)

There's one significant oddity to gameplay-as you might be able to tell, it's a completely top-down game, yet all enemies and characters can only attack to the left and right. Sometimes, this is annoying (if you're trying to attack an enemy and it's directly beneath or above you, trying to move into place to attack it can give the enemy a free attack), and other times, it's a life-saver (when a mob of enemies shows up and come at you one at a time instead of just surrounding you and mauling you like they ought to). I do tend to look at the game and think it probably started life as a side-scrolling game and was retooled partway through development, and it might possibly have given more ways to make the characters distinct if it was a sidescroller instead (but then again, maybe not).

There's no two ways about it, though-being able to change into nearly a dozen different forms with different abilities is fun. Sure, quite a few of them are redundant, and a couple of them are mostly pretty lame. But there are enough with distinct, useful powers or abilities that it creates a feel that's pretty fun. My personal favorites to play are probably XLR8 (you might have guessed) and Ghostfreak, because XLR8 is exhilarating to watch and using Ghostfreak to sneak through walls and ambush guys (or destroy them without even emerging from the wall) is frankly kinda hilarious.

The big problem with the game comes from the boss fight. The boss is an enormous robot (as tall as Fourarms and with enormous spidery legs that take up much more area) which mostly behaves similarly to the more conventional enemies-it moves towards you and tries to attack, in its case with both ranged and melee attacks. (All other enemies only have one or the other.) This is actually pretty harmless-once you're close enough with Fourarms or a ranged fighter, you can hit it with frequent attacks that will keep it effectively paralyzed from its repeated spasms of simulated pain, and it's too slow to run you down easily except in your slowest forms. Keep it up for too long, though, and it suddenly switches attack patterns, essentially turning into an enormous spinning rotor blade that's completely invulnerable and faster than any form but XLR8, chasing you relentlessly. Also, despite its huge-looking footprint, it can fit into in any space that you can fit into (only relevant because there are a number of destructible scenery items in the boss arena mixed in with some lesser enemies).

This might not be such a problem, except that during the boss fight, your time in alien forms is roughly halved for some reason. Adjusting to this handicap takes a lot of practice, although the game autosaves and will remember for some time how much you've done in it, so you don't have to slog through the early stages over and over. Thus far, between the shorter time in alien forms and the sheer toughness of the boss, I have beaten the final stage exactly once, and that seemed to be partly the result of incredible luck. (Although it may have been that the pause in my bombardment caused by changing back sooner than I expected kept it from going all TOTAL DEATH on me that first crucial time. Also, for some reason, I kept accidentally changing into Gray Matter, and I'm not sure, but that might actually have helped.)

All in all, Battle Ready is a fun and somewhat short game which mostly isn't too hard, but also is partly interesting because it suggests possibilities. The easy shapeshifting ability is a winner, and I personally think it ought to be explored in more games, especially simple ones like this.

There's a good chance that my next game review will also be Ben 10 related.

-Signing off.