With a terrible calibration system and poor motion controls, players have to deal with far more hassle than they should. Martian Panic is not an easy game to recommend. The characters selected by players will pop up and make a quip on occasion. Lives are shared among the players, though, an odd decision that will lead the team to the red game over screen far too often. Up to four local players are supported, with everyone choosing from a pool of six characters. It’s a shame that Martian Panic controls so terribly, because the game would otherwise be pretty fun with friends. Perhaps there’s a workaround that I haven’t discovered, but I found the blaster to work better with The House of the Dead: Remake (a much better game anyway) than with Martian Panic. Because Martian Panic wants the top of the Joy-Con to point at the screen, though, the blaster itself ends up pointing at the floor while playing. Place the Joy-Con in the handle of the blaster, and it can then be used to control rail shooters that support the use of a single Joy-Con. Basically, the blaster is a toy gun that (optionally) makes lights and sounds. Still, no way should the calibration spaz out so badly, especially in a game with no other control methods.Īlthough analog aiming isn’t an option here, the Martian Panic Alien Blaster is. One of the face buttons on the Joy-Con will reset the cursor when this happens, so it’s not game-breaking. Having survived the calibration process and started a game, the Joy-Cons will randomly lose their calibration entirely, causing the game to become all but unplayable. I can only imagine how painful it would be to sign in and play with four players! For instance, when signing in a second player, the game might force the first player to re-calibrate instead.
Each player must go through a wonky calibration process before they can play, but it’s tough to even get the game to recognize the Joy-Con you’re being forced to calibrate. Analog stick aiming is not supported – a huge shame. The game can only be played by waving a Joy-Con around. Little nuisances aside, controls and calibration are what really sink the Switch version of Martian Panic. This unnecessary game over screen grinds things to a halt and proves irksome since players will likely have to continue multiple times throughout each level. Most annoyingly, whenever players get a game over, the game switches to a red game over screen and asks them to continue. Not only is that annoying, but it leads to many unnecessary deaths. Reloading the player’s weapon takes a little while instead of happening instantly. Several levels end without a boss fight, for instance, which is rather anticlimactic.
Martian Panic offers a pretty standard rail shooter experience, but the lack of polish takes things down a notch. Shooting innocent bystanders will cost a life. Downed enemies sometimes drop limited-use weapons or life-refilling soda. Enemies include alien foot soldiers, fat aliens that attack with their tongues, flying drones, UFOs, and more.
Blast the baddies, and movement resumes, just like in classic light gun games like Virtua Cop and House of the Dead. During each level, the camera pans around the environment, stopping whenever enemies appear. The easiest difficulty offers unlimited continues, so it’s definitely the way to play. The game features 8 levels and three selectable difficulties. The low budget visuals sort of adds to the game’s charm, but the cutscenes are unskippable, seriously slowing the pace of the game. Martian Panic seems to have received very little in the way of graphical enhancement on the way from Wii to Switch, though everything runs in widescreen. The story comes to life before and during levels via fully-voiced cinematics that resemble those of a PlayStation 2 game. Only a ragtag group of civilians can thwart the invaders. The premise of Martian Panic is simple: green-headed aliens from Mars are invading the Earth. Unfortunately, poor controls and calibration (not to mention a lack of general polish) seriously threaten the fun. The game features a deliberately corny retro vibe, lighthearted humor, and 4-player local co-op. Earlier this year, Martian Panic returned on Nintendo Switch alongside the Martian Panic Alien Blaster accessory. Way back in 2010, N-Fusion Interactive released a light gun-style rail shooter on Wii called Martian Panic.
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