Game: Chicken Invaders/Chicken Invaders: The Next Wave
Platform: PC/iOS/Android/Linux
Year: 1999/2008.
Developer: InterAction studios.
Genre: Shoot’em Up.
Parody games are as old as time. Sometimes they are born from a deep love of the original game, sometimes they appear to satirize stale tropes and conventions after many years of stagnation, and sometimes they are just an exercise of twisting player’s expectations. They all, however, try to use the angle of humor to poke fun at many of the original game’s ideas and features. How to develop them, however, and how deep will the parody go, is the difference between them. One of the most parodied genres tacked by satire and parody is the shoot’em up genre. To be fair, it is easy to see why: Space Invaders came to define what videogames were back in 1978, and became such a phenomenon in the gaming sphere to the point of (allegedly) causing shortages of 100 yen coins in Japan. While the fast advance of technology gave birth to many new genres, Space Invader’s legacy remained a strong one. The easiness of designing this kind of games allowed their dominance in both the arcades and in the early consoles, from the Atari 2600 to the NES, SNES and Mega Drive. The genre would lose popularity during the N64/PS days, but we still can find stellar games even after that. The space shooters were also given a boost with things like the popularity of sci-fi as a setting, with Star Wars and Star Trek still strong in the minds of many, and many other nascent franchises gaining momentum. This strange combination of genre-making legacy (hell, in Spanish the genre is called “Mata marcianos” or “Martian killers” in its honor) combined with a time that absolutely adored this kind of setting causes Space Invaders and their ilk to be considered the topmost reference when it comes to retro gaming, to the same level as Mario or Pacman.
So, after everything is said and done, one has to ask… why not chickens instead of aliens? This question that nobody had dared to ask to themselves before was answered by the team InterAction Studios in 1999, when they released the first Chicken Invaders on PC.
Before we start the review, I’m going to try and review both Chicken Invaders and Chicken Invaders 2, mostly because the original title is quite simple to review and both games share a staggering amount of similarities. Why am I not reviewing the rest of the series, then? Because I haven’t played them yet, though I’m planning to do that soon. And by the way, I haven’t played the DLC for any of them, so it won’t be included in the review. I’m also sticking to the original PC version for Chicken Invaders and the Steam Release for Chicken Invaders 2.
In a universe full of dangers, a race of sentient chickens are threatening to conquer the planet and destroy the human race. Fortunately, the main player has a spaceship and a voracious hunger for chicken wings, so it’s up to you to drive back the feathery menace while also getting your stomach full. The original game released for Microsoft Windows in 1999, and it’s exactly what it says it is. A vertical shoot’em up clearly inspired by Space Invaders, the game follows its formula to a T, while also adding some minimum arcade elements at it. In the game, you have to beat wave after wave of monstrous chicken hordes flying through space (a single chicken is bigger than your spaceship), and you have to win the round by either getting them all or by surviving whatever challenge the level requires to. The chickens will have a t-shirt of different colors to indicate their toughness, from blue for the weakest, generally needing a single hit to kill, to red for the hardest, needing many hits before they go down. This will also indicate their ability to retaliate, as all of this chickens are able to lay deadly eggs that will kill you in one hit if you happen to hit them. The tougher the enemies are, the faster they will drop eggs on you. There are many different stages outside of the typical Space Invaders scenario: there’s one where you have to free Earth from the chickens orbiting it (while using Earth as a cover), there are rush levels where you have to avoid the enemy charges until they are all gone, there are levels where you have to survive a meteor rain, and then there’s the boss battle. This monster is massive, sporting a green t-shirt with a vegan slogan in it (or at least I assume it is vegan, it has a chicken wing with the no symbol circle), this enemy will drop multiple eggs at once and constantly move from one point to the screen to the other, and requires a ton of damage to defeat. When defeated, the chickens drop either a chicken wing (which will give you points for your score) or presents, which will give you upgrades for your laser. This is the standard affairs laser, but it will slowly improve the more present boxes you recover, adding more lasers to your regular shot. You also have at your disposal a missile function that basically blows up everything around the target if it hits, but this is limited and you’ll need to get points to recover them. As a default, you have three lives, but you can get more by getting extra points.
And that’s kind of it for the game, actually. The original game was basically a loop of ten levels, and once you beat them the difficulty would slowly go up until you run out of lives. This is a very arcade-like game, and the point of the gameplay is to score as many points as possible before dying. The music is almost nonexistent, with the exception of a small jingle here and there and a somewhat altered version of Thus Spake Zarathustra, no doubt an homage to 2001: An Space Odyssey. Graphics are cartoony and as simple as you could expect from a small game at the end of the 90s. The game is so simple that there are many websites that allow you to play this game in your own browser it is so simple. This one is also free on the developer’s website, probably to try to entice potential customers into getting the rest of the series. Considering how simple the original is, it is absolutely not a bad idea, although I was quite confused about why wasn’t the original on Steam when the rest of the series is. It is also the reason why Chicken Invaders is a PC only game, whereas the rest of the series has been ported to Linux and mobile.
The second game, Chicken Invaders: The Next Wave, was released in 2008, leaving a nine year gap between the original and its sequel. While in many respects the technical aspects show a lot of improvement, the game overall feels like a somewhat shallow sequel, though to be fair, how much can it advance from that starting point? Unlike the original game, The Next Wave follows a more lineal format and an actual story mode. Apparently, the plot of the original game was all a ruse plotted by the chickens to distract the hero enough so they could conquer the entirety of the Solar System. It is up to you to free all of the main areas of the Solar System, including the Asteroid Belt and the Sun (yes, the chickens somehow conquered the Sun). The story covers 110 rounds separated in 11 worlds, with all of them covering a similar format and level distribution, with a couple of exceptions. Between each world there is a small cutscene, in reality a short clip of somewhat absurdist humor, like for example the hero getting a ticket from a space cop for driving too fast. In space. With chickens invading the Solar System.
The gameplay stays more or less the same, but with many bells and whistles to the overall presentation. The info is displayed to the player much more elegantly to the player, with score points more clear and dynamic than before that allows you to know what you have to do to score certain bonuses again. The bonuses are named after, you guested, chicken puns, whether this is something of your liking or not is up to you. There are three kinds of weapons, all unlocked by capturing different types of presents: the typical spreader, the concentrated laser and a wave of energy. This all can be upgraded up to eleven times to reach a very powerful massive attack. Out of all of them, it seems that the spreader is still the best possible option, especially when you need to get sideways to defeat the bosses, with the laser and the energy wave taking a backseat (the laser is more powerful, the wave covers more are). The game is rather forgiving when it comes to lives: you get extra lives very fast in the game, and if you run out of them, there are checkpoints at your disposal after every world. They even allow you to keep the last power up you got when you died. Granted, it won’t have the same punch as the one you had, but still. Music is better, though not by much. Graphics are improved in the sense that there are more things in the game, but the same level of artistry is present, with mostly all previous assets recycled. There are small differences, like the bosses’ t-shirt is different, but they are almost unnoticeable. As a bit of a bonus, the Steam version has four achievements, two for each level of difficulty: beat the game using missiles and beat them without using them.
And, once again, that is it. I won’t spoil the final boss, but if you play the game enough, you will see what the devs got in store for you from a mile away.
The Chicken Invaders series is one of those franchises that you love because you have fond memories of it, but looking back you question yourself how did the developers manage to create a franchise out of this? The developers are still making games (and DLC) for it. The last game was in 2015, so it’s not really that long ago. While the idea seems absurd in both concept and execution, I cannot say the gameplay is other than simple fun. They won’t win GOTYs any time soon, that’s for sure, but for what they are, they are simple and charming, though in this days that might not be enough to make them stand out from the sea of old nostalgic games out there.
Score: 5/10
