The Corner Penthouse

I bought Men in Black II: Alien Escape because I like the Men In Black movies and I figured that it would be a good game. I couldn't be any more wrong.

GAMEPLAY

The whole premise of the game is this: you go from room to room (or area to area) and kill everything that moves (except for the "worm dudes" whom you're supposed to rescue ... or something like that).

There are five big levels broken up into sections, which too many semi-long load screen in between.

Considering that all you do in the game is shoot things, I really wonder why the programmers didn't give the player an Aim button. Then again, they didn't give a Jump button, either (jumping surely would have broken up the monotony of the game).

The most fun I had in the game was destroying all the cars on the parking garage levels. You don't get any points for it, and it doesn't accomplish a goal, but it sure was fun!


STORY

An alien prison ship crash lands on Earth, the bad aliens escape, and you have to kill them. That's all the plot there is and it's probably all you'll need.

The plot of this game is nothing the second movie. Rather than calling it "Men in Black 2: Alien Escape," Infogrames should have just called it "Men in Black: Alien Escape." That way no one would think it was even remotely like the recent film.

The only aspect of the game that is like the film is a small bit of the ending involving the Statue of Liberty and a Neurolizer..

AUDIO/VIDEO

In all honesty, I didn't pay too much attention to the audio, except for the voice actors. They were pretty good, but let's face it, Tommy Lee Jones, Will Smith, and Rip Torn are the guys we know as Agents K, J, and Zed respectively, and no one is going to be able to play those roles better. They tried to model the characters and hire voices that resemble Tommy, Will, and Rip, but unless they hired the actual actors and got permission to use their likenesses, it's always going to look like a cheap imitation ... which it does.

The weapon graphics were a little flashy, but considering the MIB's arsenal, I expected more flash from the weapons (and where's the Noisy Cricket, by the way?).

The environments were the WORST! They all look bland, muddy, washed-out, and extremely repetitive (especially on the spaceship at the end where every corridor looks just like the last).

REPLAYABILITY

To make up for the short and boring game, Infogrames threw in a bunch of unlockables to make you want to play the game again. Unfortunately, they're simply not worth unlocking. I used a cheat code to unlock everything and here's what you'd get: a couple training missions of you in one room shooting an endless supply of aliens (shouldn't these be available from the start as TRAINING for the main game?), profiles of J and K, Boss mode (fight the bosses again), profiles of all the aliens in the game (all of whom are boring and not in the films, except for the manitoba [worm guys]), and a bunch of still frames detailing the making of the game (not the movie). Yawn.

TO BUY OR TO RENT?

Rent.