Ben 10 Ultimate Alien for Wii is the latest entry in the action platformer kids genre. Odds are, if you have a kid who is a Ben 10 Wii gamer, you’ve been asked to buy or rent this game. It’s not a bad one, and if you’re looking for something to keep the little ones busy without exposing them to gratuitous bloodshed, then maybe Ultimate Alien is the game for you. In it you’ll control 17 different aliens, and go to such exciting locales such as Paris, Rome or Tokyo. You’ll wield Ben 10’s secret power, the ability to transform into any of those seventeen aliens, as you bash your way through enemies and solve puzzles.
Sounds good, right? If a little formulaic, Ben 10 isn’t really a bad game. The graphics aren’t horrible, the controls are solid, and the voice acting is done by the same cast of the TV show. The Ben 10 Wii game is definitely a little more than your average tie-in shovelware, and even for adults who aren’t into the show, running around as a giant alien and bashing enemies is a lot of fun. There don’t seem to be any major glitches in the game, and controls are easy enough to understand, if a little repetitive. Plus, it’s got a pretty cartoony portrayal of violence, so you don’t have to worry about your kid getting exposed to any decapitations.
However, once you get past the initial thrill of the game, there’s not a lot of meat to the software at all. It’s obvious the developers knew that the “hit buttons, smash enemies” dynamic would wear off for even the most steadfast Wii Ben 10 game fans, so they attempted to add a sprinkling of puzzles throughout the levels. Completing these puzzles is exceedingly easy to the point of annoying, and they seem to come right when the action in Ben 10 Ultimate Alien is getting good. On top of that, the controls, as stated before, are little more than button mashing, and it would probably be possible to literally win every fight in the game by just mashing your fist against the strike buttons.
That’s not to say it’s not fun to change into AmpFibian or Armodillo, or to blast enemies with giant rays of radiation. The Ben 10 Wii game has a lot going for it for the younger ones, especially fans of the show. An achievement system keeps track of your feats in the game, and you can use those points to unlock bonus content about both the game and the show itself. The shows creators were also very involved in the development of this game, and the art styles, storylines and music are all intact from the TV show.
In the end, it’s not a bad game to give the kids. You’re not getting an incredible amount of violence, and little ones will be able to weather the repetitive gameplay far better than this reviewer. Ben 10 UItimate Alien stands up to the kid test, especially if that kid happens to be a fan of the show.