User Score
6.7

Mixed or average reviews- based on 7 Ratings

User score distribution:
  1. Positive: 3 out of 7
  2. Negative: 1 out of 7
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  1. Jun 30, 2020
    7
    What a pleasant surprise. Aliens in the Attic is based on the 2009 movie of the same name. Now, I never watched the movie and I recall looking at it confused as a kid, knowing it would bomb, and I was correct.

    The game though. Playlogic took a turd and managed to polish it into something worth playing, especially for a kids game. Now the game follows the same loose story from the movie,
    What a pleasant surprise. Aliens in the Attic is based on the 2009 movie of the same name. Now, I never watched the movie and I recall looking at it confused as a kid, knowing it would bomb, and I was correct.

    The game though. Playlogic took a turd and managed to polish it into something worth playing, especially for a kids game. Now the game follows the same loose story from the movie, and honestly the more it distanced itself the better.

    Key points are that your shrunk and you have to work your way through the house and outside to defeat alien bosses and baddies as a shrunken version of yourselves. There are 3 characters to play as, Jack, the other guy, and the sister. The sister is good at platforming, Jack I think is the one who is supposed to be a nerd and can push boxes or whatever, and then the other guy has like alien powers because hes good with tech or whatever. I didn't play close attention to the story as you can tell.

    The character mechanics makes the player think about what character to use to surpass obstacles. Now these are quite easy, but it does well to teach some game logic to kids. The gameplay is a 2D shootemup. Like an easy contra. The only qualm with the difficulty is truly how trivial the cannon fodder NPCs become once you get the anti-gravity power up, With this you can essentially shoot up all spawned enemies and ground pound them for an instant kill. It becomes the defacto weapon and for good reason, but it feels good using it.

    There are also weapon upgrades you can unlock throughout the stages, you get these for exploring the stages and finding characters from the movie. This incentivized me to spend a moment exploring the stages.

    The game certainly isn't perfect. The music is not annoying, but I forgot there even was any. Sound effects are passable, graphics work well enough, making for a 2.5D experience. I actually played through and beat the game. It was about 6-8 hours long and I enjoyed it. I would actually genuinely recommend this for a quick, fun time.
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Awards & Rankings

97
#97 Most Discussed DS Game of 2009
Metascore
58

Mixed or average reviews - based on 7 Critic Reviews

Critic score distribution:
  1. Positive: 1 out of 7
  2. Negative: 1 out of 7
  1. The shooting, platforming, and boss encounters are all enjoyable, but the game is incredibly short. It's also a very conventional formula that plays out a bit too simplistically.
  2. Every time I came close to defeating it, my game would freeze up (no pun intended) and I'd have to reset. After half a dozen interruptions like this, I gave up.
  3. 74
    A solid DS title that uses a familiar game style that its target demographic is likely not to appreciate. The play time is a bit short clocking in at just under three hours, and with a lack of any type of multi-player or online capabilities there isn't much reason to revisit the game after completion.