I Was An Atomic Mutant Review





Developer: Canopy Games Publisher: THQ
Release Date: February 15, 2003 Also On: None

I had not heard much about I Was An Atomic Mutant, but the packaging alone made the game worth the 2 €uros it was sold for. I cannot say that I regretted my purchase. I Was An Atomic Mutant is cheap. There are spelling mistakes on the packaging and in the game, the graphics were not much more than “ok”, back when it was released, and the overall game is quite simple. Is it simply bad or does it entertain at least for some time?

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Your goal in this game is to destroy everything. You are an atomic mutant that came into being as a scientific accident. In your blind rage, you have different weapons to assist you, the most important one (and the only one I really used) being the shooting weapon. You walk around with the direction keys and look and aim with the mouse. The biggest problem is the third person view because your monster is easily in the way. Also, you often do not see your orange cursor on the orange background and collecting power-ups can be a little difficult. Once you have gotten used to this control setup, it works without too much problems.

There are four monsters to choose from: a gigantic woman (The She-Beast), Reptomicus (a dinosaur-like creature), an alien robot (The Invader from Dimension X) and a disembodied, floating brain. Every one of them has a black and white movie trailer cut together from old film material. These, as well as the intro of the game, are very funny and worth watching. The style is also repeated in the menu with words like “AWESOME” or “DEVASTATING” written everywhere.

You can choose some more options: first, if the “movie” is shown in a theatre or in a drive in. In-game you can switch to the nice looking but unplayable movie view with the right mouse button. Second, if you want to play the game in black and white. Unfortunately the game was not optimized for this so it is only a gimmick. The last and most important choice is the mode you want to play. In “Monster” you have got one life but unlimited energy. In “Arcade” you have multiple lives and can collect more, but you sometimes have to wait until your energy reloads. Arcade mode has three different difficulties it can be played on.

All of these choices are nice and you are occupied with the game for a while until you have tried them all. They do not change the fact that the game becomes repetitive around level 30 though. Until then, every level is a little unique and there are increasingly tougher enemies. There is some actual gameplay when you fight against planes and have to find tanks before they do too much damage.

The game lasts for about four or five hours and you can always come back to it if you need to destroy something. While the graphics are old, the explosions are nice and the human cries for help have a satisfying touch to them. This game was more fun than I expected and it is worth about five times as much as I paid for it in Germany.

Graphics: 6.5
Sound: 8
Gameplay: 5
Creativity: 7
Replay Value/Game Length: 3
Final: 5.9
Written by Ortwin Review Guide

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