THIS REVIEW HAS SPOILERS AND GAME PLAY COMMENTARY ON IT YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED.


So, I am reviewing the game Bart vs Space Mutants, on the gameplay while adding commentary to parts of it. The plot involves aliens that are trying to build an ultimate weapon to take over the world, which sounds simple and cliche, however to build this weapon, whatever it is, it requires one ingredient: purple-colored objects! What kind of time constraint were they under when they came up with that? So, it's up to Bart to save the world, and this is the first level. And, the object is to get rid of anything that's purple. Under most circumstances, this means simply spray-painting them red, but other times, you have to be a little more creative to figure it out. It could mean walking across a clothesline, dropping towels over them. The aliens will never think to look under those towels.


Then, there's a part where you have to jump on a ball and knock over a paint can, and if you miss this paint can, the ball doesn't come back. You don't get a second chance. And keep in mind, you have to De-purplize all the purple objects. I think you're allowed to miss a few of them, but there's not much room to screw up.


You collect coins as you go, which you're going to need to buy stuff with. The first time playing through, you're not going to know exactly what items you're going to need. And, I could tell you for one thing, that key isn't necessary, and as for this whistle, all it does is summon an angry, attacking, crazy dog that kills Bart if he comes in contact.


Coming to a decision where you could buy cherry bombs and rockets, how many should you buy of each? Well, there's only one instance I recall where you need the cherry bomb and many, many, many times when you need the rockets. But, how would you know that the first time? You'll end up having to backtrack to the store. Trying to hit the bird is just ridiculous. Your accuracy has to be perfect. There you go after many times. These vases are also a pain. They're too short to spray when you're on the ledge, so you just gotta keep jumping and spraying.


And, you know, why's the Simpsons theme song still playing? It's good for the beginning, but when you have to listen to it for ten straight minutes, what a garbage load of uncaring! Let's talk about the enemies. It sucks that you can't really kill anything. But, lucky for you, they got nothing better to do than just bounce around in little patterns on the streets of Springfield all day. I also wonder why none of these aliens look anything like the ones in the beginning. Anyway, some of them disguise themselves as human beings, and you can only see them while wearing X-ray glasses, kind a like the movie They Live. These are the only ones that you can kill by jumping on their heads, but if it's not an alien, just a regular human being, then you take a hit. Two hits and you're dead, by the way.


So you always gotta make sure to have your glasses selected. Come on, glasses. Come on, come on, glasses! Come on, come on, come on! AHHH! Sometimes, I just jump on them on a pure gamble because I don't feel like selecting the glasses. You don't need to kill them, anyway. But, they leave behind letters. Collect them all to spell "MAGGIE," then she'll help you during the boss battle. But, besides, it's strangely satisfying to jump on those aliens heads. After all, don't you wish you could just go around killing aliens, not making purple things not purple? Why not just crap all over them and make everything brown?!?!


So after that it goes onto stage 2. So, you foiled the aliens plan because now, there's nothing purple in existence. So, what do they do? They change the ingredient... to hats. So, if it could just switch like that into anything, why not make it something like grass or water or something that's really easy to find. It just makes no sense. So, you're going through the mall, stealing all the hats because this is the only mall that has hats. Whether they're floating in the air or you gotta grab them off some body's head, the concept is pretty simple compared to the first
level. No ingenuity, just collect hats. The imagination employ is just astounding in how inconsistent it is. It's like a different person designed each level. It's also really funny that people just casually walk by. If I was walking through the mall and I saw giant bouncing doughnuts and killer marshmallows, walking shows, spring-jumping shoes, moon walking shoes, paper bags with legs, paper bags with scary bag heads, and killer towels, I think I'd crap my pants. Another thing really screwed up about this mall is that a lot of the floor's covered in cement, which results in instant death. The only way to get through this, is to master some of the worst controls in video game history.


This should have been the first thing I commented on, but now is the point where it's really a problem. Looking back at the first level, it takes a lot of practice to make some of those jumps. Jump and run are both the same button. The A button jumps and holding the A button runs. Why the same stupid button?!?! What were they thinking? So, trying to execute a running jump is not possible. By hitting both the A and B buttons at the same time, you do a super jump. Getting used to this is required in this game. Now, I'm jumping across lollipops. You gotta land on them when they're horizontal. No, No NO!!! I went right through it! Alright, just one big jump ARRRRG! There's no continues in this game, either. If you get hit twice, you're dead. Die three times, and the
game's over.


You can get some 1-ups, but no continues, as if it's not challenging enough. Now, I don't have a problem with challenge, but when the challenge is based on how crippled the controls are, then I'm done with this game and I'm never going to play it again.