Daisy Mae’s Alien Buffet Review

IUGO lovingly recreate the scratchy print and low-budget style of the 70’s sci-fi (s)exploitation flick for their latest, Daisy Mae’s Alien Buffet. Serving up a heady mix of B-movie riffing plot, gory action, and scantily clad heroine, the game is a spectacular, but all-too-brief, blast from the past.

Here’s the dealio: UFOs have landed in the desert and it’s up to the trailer trash titular star to dust off her trusty Tommy guns, step up to the plate, and single-handedly put a stop to the alien invasion.

Having tweaked the controls to your liking at the drive-in-alike menu screen, it’s time to dish out some death to those extra-terrestrial uglies. Yet despite the game’s stylish delivery and (nudge nudge, wink wink) boisterous sense of fun, this is a disappointingly shallow shoot ’em up.

Basically all you’ve got to do is last as long as you can against the hordes of slimy monsters, grab the occasional uninspired weapons power-up or medi-pack and top up your “taunt gauge” by killing everything that moves.

As you play on the guns and enemies get bigger while the outfits get smaller, but given the game’s repetitiveness, only the most dedicated pervert gamer is likely to stick around long enough to ogle Daisy strut her stuff in a leopard print two-piece.

There are some nice touches, like the implementation of collision detection with the scenery and a good variety of different enemy types – the aliens range from irritating ankle biters to monsters the size of a house. While the pick-up-and-play accessability and Grindhouse graphical style also impress.

But with the likes of Alive 4-ever and the forthcoming Revolt pushing the boundaries of dual stick shooting, Daisy Mae‘s solitary environment and derivitive survive-against-endless-waves-of-baddies mechanic feels dated and doesn’t exactly offer much bang for your buck.

That said, thanks to its perky protagonist’s newfound notoriety the game seems destined for cult status nonetheless.