Space Invaders Forever review for PS4, Xbox One, Switch

Space Invaders. Every gamer out there regardless of age or skill level knows of at least one version of this iconic title. From it’s start in Arcades across the globe, to it’s venture to the home market, Space Invaders is, and always will be, a household name in gaming. I was very excited to see a collection of this classic series hitting the Switch Console, and well, it’s not exactly the collection that I was hoping for.

What we have here is a small collection of games that are more modern takes on the original Invaders games. First up we have “Space Invaders Xtreme”, the most modern of the collection. Its a super crazy, action packed version of the original with an High energy soundtrack, new crazy weapons, boss battles and high scoring combos that make it hard to put down. An overall fantastic game that I previously reviewed a few years ago. If your interested in a more in depth look at Xtreme, you can check out my review here.

The Next game in the collection is more like the original games, but adds a few modern flairs. “Space Invaders Gigamax 4 SE’ is a 4 player co-op version of the original game with the same look and feel, but extended to accommodate 4 ships at the bottom. There are way more invaders coming down this time, and double the amount of UFOs at the top, and they all have different movement patterns to confuse you at random times. After 3 waves, you fight a boss invader of sorts that fills the screen and attacks the players. Defeat the boss and it’s back to fighting a screen full of invaders, only now they are much faster. Rinse and Repeat. While there is nothing wrong with this concept, they opted to make this a Couch Co-Op experience rather than adding online multiplayer. Kind of a bummer as this game NEEDS you to have other players, as playing this by yourself is not only a chore, but is largely unrewarding.

One last game included with this collection is a completely new experience called “Arkanoid vs. Space Invaders”. Two Taito shooters / puzzlers coming together into one game sounds great, but is nothing more than a port of the IOS and Android offering from a few years ago. You use the Switch’s touch screen to control your Arkanoid Ship and blast away at the Space Invaders with the bouncing ball. It’s kinda cool at first because the you can unlock other Taito Characters with coins you earn from beating levels. Some of them actually have powers that can help you get through the more challenging portions, but that’s really the only high point here. The fact that this game does not use controllers, or the ability to play it on the TV leaves me cold. This is nothing more than a cell phone game, and it looks like no effort was put in bringing this to the Switch. The game is kind of fun, but really doesn’t belong on a console, in this form anyway.

Space Invaders Forever seems like a good collection, but I would of liked to have a collection containing the Arcade offerings, and maybe some of the console ports (Like Lunar Loonies). Xtreme is really the only stand-out here as the other games while playable under exact conditions, really don’t fit in. This is definitely not a classic collection of Space Invaders Games, but a mash-up of classic and modern that is underwhelming. I really can’t recommend this release at full price, but it would be a good one to grab if on sale for Space Invaders Xtreme alone. Sadly, this is one “Classic Game Collection” that can be skipped.

ININ Games provided us with a Space Invaders Forever Nintendo Switch code for review purposes.