The joke’s on us. Review

The joke’s on us.

Back in the 1940’s, nothing was more terrifying than Martians. People were

convinced little green men would come to Earth, maim our livestock, shoot us with

ray guns, blow up our houses and explore our daughters with syringes.

This fear held fast through the 60’s and 70’s, freaking us out all

the way up until E.T. turned aliens into alcoholic

stuffed animals with great

comic timing. The 80’s ruined everything.

For

proof, just spend a day with Cosmi, star of Capcom’s quirky import, Under

the Skin. Our Smurfish hero from Planet Mischief is sent to Earth in

order to prove his mettle as a sneaky little troublemaker by playing pranks

on unsuspecting humans. Unfortunately, his timing is way off and the only

one doing any drinking will be you, because his repetitive game is about as rewarding

as a surprise anal probe.

The gameplay had promise, at least. In the game’s main Story mode, you play as Cosmi through eight small levels and set about annoying, irritating, and generally pestering people. This is accomplished by playing any of forty different pranks on them. And when I say “playing pranks,” I obviously mean “using items,” because that’s really all you do here.

The humans might be stupid, but they’re not dumb, and do in fact know

the difference between a little blue alien and a normal human being, so you have

to disguise yourself by shooting them with your handy little zapper. You then

scamper over to any of several UFOs floating around on each level to transform

into that person. Doing so gives you that person’s camouflage and particular assortment of

five pranks, which you then use on the other humans in order to scare them out

of their’coins.

Yep, your ultimate goal is to collect coins. Either you have to collect a certain

number before time runs out, or you have to collect more than an opposing alien.

No matter how you slice it, you’re grabbing coins. Coins.

Now there’s an

otherworldly concept.

Obviously,

much of the game’s success hinges on the pranks themselves, but sadly there is

little rhyme, reason, or complex strategy here. Basic pranks like laying down

tacks, bopping people with a boxing glove or shooting them with a rifle can be

just as effective as the more creative ones, like the swarm of land sharks, the

giant hamburger of doom or ” you

guessed it ” the pungent fart. Naturally, nailing

lots of people at once nets you more coins, but there just isn’t much skill to

any of it.

As

you annoy the masses, they get upset and chase after you. You can take two hits

before turning back into your original blue form, at which point you’ll

also lose a heap of coins. The only way to make the mob chill out is to find

a UFO and transform, a feat that boggles the crowds even if they are

staring directly at you when you do it. Transforming is also the only way to

gain new pranks, so it should come as no surprise that the game quickly turns

into a boring routine of pranking, zapping, transforming and repeating. This

is not a deep game.

Part of the problem is that the eight levels are categorically tiny. You can

scope out the whole level in about one minute, leaving you a good nine minutes

to just scare people out of their coins. Under

the Skin tries to add some flair in the form of Panic Time, level specific

incidents that crop up a few times during the course of a round. The danger level

increases, but if you play it correctly you’ll

pick up tons of coins. More often than not, you can almost ignore it altogether.

However, you can’t ignore Under the Skin‘s graphics, clearly the game’s brightest spot. The cel-shaded look is somewhere in between Jet

Set Radio and Viewtiful Joe, with sharp, clean lines and surprisingly fluid animations. More could have been done with interactive environmental objects, but by and large the graphics don’t disappoint.

Especially when compared to the sound. The shrieks and groans of the humans grate

on the nerves after an hour or so, and the music is pretty bland throughout.

If the repetitive nature of the gameplay wasn’t rough enough, Under

the Skin is also thin when it comes to game modes and replay value.

Aside from the Story mode, you can play a Vs. match against another alien from

Planet Whatever, try your hand at Co-Op, or eventually open up Training mode,

which essentially lets you grab as many coins as possible in a certain amount

of time. None of these add any new levels or gameplay tweaks and wind up

doing absolutely nothing to heighten the experience.

Under the Skin would be better suited as a free online Flash

game than something sold at retail. It fails to live up to its odd premise

and relies too heavily on being offbeat, ultimately turning into more of a cute

diversion than a full-fledged game. Under

the Skin proves that we are not alone, but maybe we’d be better off

if we were.