Mobile Invaders (Full)

Summary

Ah, the good old days, when spending hours at the arcade hall playing games and sustaining oneself on milkshakes, sodas and the occasional cracker was a little slice of heaven. What am I saying—many of us are too young to have really spent our teens hanging out in arcade halls, but you may remember what it was like scrambling out of bed on a Saturday morning and heading straight for you console to play games till your parents got up and told you to brush your teeth / have breakfast / practice cello… Whatever the case may be, if you’re feeling nostalgic, check out Mobile Invaders (Full), a Space Invaders clone for Android.

What I notice right off the bat is that the graphics really do harken back to Space Invaders.
Mobile Invaders (Full) is hence a great clone for the legendary arcade game. Even the way the alien crafts move is true to Space Invaders form. Shoot lasers or hide behind rocks, just like back in the day.

Optically the game is very well made (if you dig that old skool, nostalgic kind of style)—and yet, I couldn’t quite get into the game. We had a few little bones of contention with this game:

There is a fair amount of lagging, and while we were only marginally bothered by this, it’s worth noting.
There’s no music. Now, Space Invaders loyalists will tell us that there was no score to the original either, but playing this kind of game on a small smartphone screen feels a bit dry and brittle without music.
The Invaders don’t pick up their tempo—they just kind of buzz around. Hence, there’s not a big enough challenge to spur players onwards and upwards…
Lastly, controls were somewhat jerky.

Bottom line:
Mobile Invaders (Full) is a fun Space clone, but it didn’t blow our skirts up. That said: let’s be honest, if we were to test the original Space Invaders today, in light of all the developments that have taken place in the gaming world over the past 3 decades, we would probably ‘only’ award it a ‘good’ rating, too. So here’s a pat on the back for Mobile Invaders, and we do recommend it to lovers of the original game.
 

Touchscreen controls are okay but not stellar.
The Mobile Invaders (Full) design is lovely—if you like the original design, that is.
 

Mobile Invaders (Full) runs quite well, though there are occasional pauses. There were no force closes or crashes.

Mobile Invaders (Full) can be downloaded for free from the Android Market.