Aliens Attack

Aliens Attack takes the shooting out of your hands. The gun runs on its own, hammering away at the sky whether you are ready or not, and the only thing left for you to control is where your hero is standing. That turns a shooter into a dodging game with a soundtrack of gunfire.

The defenders are a scruffy crew - Ramdo, Bernie, Mr. Zee, Ivan and Sgt. Pepper - drawn as cartoons and plainly nobody's first choice to save a planet. The Martians are blue, numerous and fond of firing in patterns, which is where the game gets interesting: lasers arrive in shapes, not at random, so the safe gap is usually a step further along than instinct says. Standing still is the one move that never works.

How to play

Your weapon fires on its own from the moment the level starts, so treat the whole game as movement. Slide left and right to keep your hero out of the incoming laser fire while the bullets going up handle themselves. Watch the shape the enemy fire makes rather than any single shot, because the gap in it moves steadily across the screen. Sitting under a target to keep hitting it is how most runs end early.

Controls

Left and right movement is all you are given, and it is all the game asks for. The machine gun fires automatically - there is no shoot button to press and no reloading to think about - so your input is simply steering your hero across the bottom of the screen, by mouse or by the on-screen controls on a phone.