Ultimate Ben: Alien Force War

One of the most recent additions to the Ben Alien family is the multiplatform game, Ultimate Ben: Alien Force War, which follows hero Ben Tennyson, his cousin Gwen and their mutual friend Kevin Levin, as they attempt to track down pieces of alien technology hidden on Earth as well as unravel the mysterious disappearance of Grandpa Max and the suspicious activities of the Plumber called Gorvan.

Game is a mix of traditional arcade brawling action peppered with a light amount of platforming. Of course, cutscenes are also present to deliver the game's lackluster narrative, which is toted as being a "new story" in the Ultimate Ben: Alien Force War universe. Unfortunately, the entire affair is incredibly uninspired and does little to develop the characters presented (though I suppose that's to be expected, considering the fact that they've been developed via the television show). It doesn't help that the pre-rendered cutscenes are terrible looking and almost fall into the "laughable" category. Alien Force could have been a fun, kid-friendly take on the series, but those cutscenes just don't cut it

You'll spend most of your time in Ultimate Ben: Alien Force War controlling Ben Tennyson and his five alien forms. Most levels are linear in nature and have you moving down a path towards some uneventful end goal or confrontation that completely lacks energy. While most of the levels have sections of ridges or pillars to jump across (and a few poorly executed puzzles), most of the terrain is flat and boring and acts as a battleground for the constant fighting you'll be doing against the HighBreed and their minions.

Ben is fairly useless on his own but the five alien forms and their varying powers do come in handy. Ben, using his patented Omnitrix, can transform into Swampfire, Big Chill, Spidermonkey, Jet Ray or Humungousaur -- creatures of varying sizes, each with its own set of special moves to make use of. This is where the whole idea of "missed opportunities" really comes into play. You see, transforming, multi-combo battle sounds like a great idea but it just isn't executed well here... at all. Hit detection and basic character physics feel horrendously cheap and you really don't get any reward for plowing through enemies, besides unlocking more combos to use.