Who hasn’t wanted a pet when they were a kid? How about a pet alien? Don’t worry, I am not talking about the destructive, snack on your brains variety. No, we are talking about the lovable, and friendly variety found in movies like E.T. Well, thanks to Game Factory, and developer Shin’em, we get our chance to have a Pet Alien of sorts on our Nintendo DS. Will it be a fun filled, out of this world adventure? Or will it ultimately be as fun as a pet rock? Read on to find out.

Pet Alien is obviously based off of the CGI cartoon show of the same name. The story centers on a young lad named Tommy, and his five alien friends. How did a young boy make friends with aliens, you may ask? Well, apparently their spaceship crashed into a lighthouse where Tommy just happens to be living. The game begins when a mysterious spaceship abducts Tommy and only his alien friends can save him from a new threat, the Robotix, who hope to make Tommy the star attraction in their intergalactic zoo.

The Robotix spaceship is gigantic, and if Tommy’s alien friends hope to save him they will have to work together. Each level in Pet Alien is built around a puzzle like design. You simply collect all the crystals in each level to activate the teleporter. Make it to the teleporter, and you finish the level. Sounds easy right, but trust us, its gets a bit more tricky. You will have to use each of your alien friend’s abilities to make it through the various obstacles. Gumpers, for example, the first alien you start with can destroy blocks in order to clear a path. The other aliens Dinko, Swanky, Flip and Scruffy have abilities that range from being able to hover in mid air to pushing blocks.

The difficulty level in Pet Alien is mild to say the least. Most levels are extremely simple, and lack any complexity at all. This is not to say it’s not entertaining. One of the more fun aspects is tricking the Robotix, which populate the many levels, into walking into traps. As you may have guessed, the AI in Pet Alien is intentionally stupid which works well, but the overall level layout does feel at times that it borders on redundancy.


Dinko’s got game!

Intermingled throughout levels are boss battles. They number five in all, and are extremely well done. Each boss guards a different floor of the spaceship, and they range from a giant frog to a flatulent turtle, just what one would want from a end level boss.

As far as extras go Pet Alien is really a slim package. First off, there is no multiplayer to speak of. With most Nintendo DS games now having multiplayer, this really brings down the fun factor with Pet Alien. Although Pet Alien does have some decent extras like five unlockable mini games and a gallery section, this game could really have benefited from some multiplayer options.

From a completely visual standpoint Pet Alien looks nice. All the player-controlled aliens look great and are superbly animated. Even more impressive is there is some nice zooming, and 3D effects found in Pet Alien. Oddly despite the nice graphics on the top screen, the touch screen graphics are dull and static.

Feeling Alienated?
Pet Alien does have a lot going for it. You have a decent game design that borrows heavily from puzzle game elements, where the emphasis is more on action than problem solving. Pet Aliens only real drawback is it’s maddening redundancy. Yet the presentation is very charming, and I actually caught myself smiling on more than one occasion. If you can stick with it, Pet Alien actually can be fun, and that’s not such an alien concept after all.