If this is supposed to be an invasion, then I think my snail wandered onto the wrong battlefield; it’s more like a one-snail assault. Snailien Invasion shows a lot of promise, but ultimately gets squished by it’s unfortunate fixation on multiplayer combat in the vacuum that is the Xbox indie landscape.
Snailien Invasion (go ahead and say it again – Snailien Invasion) is basically an amped-up version of Worms. It strips out the turn-based elements that make some rounds of Worms a snooze-fest and morphs the concept into an arena-based 2D action game. Despite its glaring similarities, the pacing and the feel of the game are so different that it doesn’t feel like a ripoff at all. Perhaps in a different reality (one where snails form armies) and with a handful of tweaks, this game would get the attention it deserves. If you’re a college student or have a bunch of friends around, you’ll probably really get a kick out of the local multiplayer. But for the rest of us folk in the real world, it faces the catch-22 conundrum of requiring an online community to be fun, and thus it’s impossible to recommend purchasing because said community doesn’t already exist.
