This game is all about humor and fun factor.

Well, I guess I should start off by saying this game delivers on its title. When they use the word stupid, they mean it, and though there are times in the game when you feel this coming through rather clearly, understand that, at least in my opinion, it is a good sort of stupid. There are several degrees of stupid. Take, for instance, someone I know, who got engaged to the same woman three times, each time giving her a bigger ring. They didn't ever get married, and she kept the rings. Bad stupid. Another sort of stupid could be anything included in a Mel Brooks movie. Good stupid. Stupid Invaders toys around with both sorts of stupid, but definitely lands in the latter more often.

There has been a lot of talk about the death of the adventure genre, and though this venerable genre has been ridden with bullets over the years, it still has a heartbeat. Take Funcom's The Longest Journey, an excellent adventure, as an example of the genre's life. Stupid Invaders doesn't achieve such lofty accolades that were bestowed upon Funcom's game, but then, it doesn't set out to do that. Someone in the game industry woke up one morning and said, "Hey, I don't want to keep pumping out polygons and other video-card candy. I want to entertain." Hmm. There is a novel idea, and one that has been lost in the age of upgrading computers and running demos to see how many friggin frames per second we can pump of the same old shoot 'em up crap. Instead of that, it seems the folks that crafted this game wanted to deliver a bit of interactive entertainment. No, it doesn't work perfectly all the time, but neither does anything I have ever used on my computer.

I first caught a glimpse of this game last May at E3. Though they only showed a videotaped demo, I was impressed and put it on my 'Check it Out' list. A lot of time has gone by since then, but the game is finally out, and though it isn't as hilarious as I thought it would be, it beats watching CNBC.

Stupid Invaders puts you in the shoes of five hapless aliens trapped on Earth after their spaceship crashes. The characters consist of a squat, quasi-intelligent leader, a complete moron with buck teeth, a fat loudmouth, a two-headed creature who constantly contradicts himself, and a small, green character who only wants to have a sex change. Nice group, eh? They initially think it is going to take a few hours to fix the ship, but instead it takes a few years, and they spend the time in an abandoned house, eating junk food and watching television. During this time, they draw the attention of an evil scientist who wants to conduct experiments on them and steal the technology of their spacecraft. As the repairs for the spacecraft are completed, the scientist sends a hitman after the aliens, and this is where the game, and fun, begins.

The first thing you notice about the game is the graphics. There has always been a lot of talk about games reaching the level of Pixar Studios, the ones who created Toy Story. The animation in this game might not be on that level, but I'll say this, we aren't more than a couple of years away. The cut-scene graphics rival anything on television, and even the in-game graphics are top notch. The beauty of it is that you don't need some ridiculous hardware to run the game. On a PII-500 with an 8MB video card, the game ran smoothly, with almost no noticeable slowdown when the graphics got heavy. On a faster machine, with a Voodoo5, things were just downright perfect. From a graphical standpoint, this game is a masterpiece, and is worthy of purchase for just this reason. Of course, we don't buy games to ogle at our screens, do we?

Stupid Invaders uses a simple interface to control the action. Though it is groundbreaking in its graphical presentation, the gameplay is tried and true. You have several different commands for your characters (walk, pick-up, talk, etc) and the control scheme is very reminiscent of the classic Sierra adventure games of the early nineties. It takes a second or two to get the gist of things, but once you do, it will become seamless, if not spectacular.

The most important element of an adventure game is the puzzle solving. There is a fine line between overly difficult puzzles and child's play. Though at times clever, Stupid Invaders does lean more to the simple side. Most of the items you find are used within a few moves, and it isn't too hard to figure out that you need to use a newly found item on the next scene because it is all you have in your inventory. There are some times when you'll scratch your head for a moment, trying to figure things out, but most people familiar with the genre should be able to figure things out fairly quickly, and this is a major disappointment for this game. I guess the title applies here a little bit. The game isn't a complete slouch however; there are some great puzzles, but the beginning of the game is ridden with some rather simple stuff.

The game's saving grace is its entertainment factor. Even though this certainly isn't the most challenging game to come down the pike, what makes you keep playing are the amazing graphics and the humor. I must warn you that this is completely low humor, the sort that contains toilet jokes, ass scratching, homosexual references, along with just about anything else that might offend the average Nun. You either enjoy this sort of humor, or you don't. You either like Dennis Leary, or Dennis Miller. Well, both of these men are way above this game. So, it's more like early Jim Carrey sort of humor. It's, well, stupid. I personally enjoyed the humor, and I think most other people, once they know what to expect, will agree.

Stupid Invaders won't win too many awards. Aside from its stellar animation, there really isn't anything groundbreaking here. This isn't the sort of game that you'll look back on as one of your best gaming experiences. You will, however, enjoy almost every bit of this game, and considering that the game is selling on the street for about 30 bucks, that's good value.

Reviewed by John Misak, PC Gameworld.