Attack of the Saucerman!

The Good
Although the core gameplay can be described as platformer/shooter, there are a lot of scripted scenes, dialogs and different objectives given to you, keeping the gameplay varied.

The graphics do certainly not hold up against native PC games of the time, but they are not bad at all. The animated sprites (enemies, player etc.) look good, and the level design itself often has some nice and lovely details. For example, in the first level, there is a conveyor belt going through a x-ray machine. If Ed passes through that machine, his x-ray image is shown on a computer screen.

Also, the game offers a great variety of different environments and settings, with many big open spaces (although the draw distance is very short, so actually you don't see much of that). Each of the settings has some specific enemies. Finally, I liked some of the music tunes, and they mostly fit well into the game.

The Bad
The game is extremely tough, and there is no skill level selection. It's not impossible to beat (I did it, after all), but it takes a lot of time and involves a good deal of frustration. It sometimes made me give up and return to the game after some days or even weeks.

It's not made easier by the fact that the controls are rather sluggish. Maybe it plays better with a gamepad/controller, as it was a Playstation game at first, I didn't try that though.

The dialogues are quite silly and mostly following the same scheme. At least that's what I'm thinking today, it didn't bother me when I was playing through the game (as far as I remember - I was 13 or 14 at the time). In addition, the "voice acting" consists only of funny alien noises, and there is no way to skip a single line of text. Therefore, watching the cutscenes get's a bit tiresome. You can always skip the whole scene of course, but I don't want that - I like story driven games and want to know whats happening and why.

The Bottom Line
I'm not sure what kind of audience the developers were aiming at. The dialogs and cutscenes seem to be targeted at younger players, and the graphics also have a rather cartoony feel. But on the other hand, the game is not only very hard, but also quite violent (for a platforming game) - there is pixelated blood when someone is hit, and the death screams of human enemies in the first levels would easily fit a first-person shooter.

All in all, it's a solid and playable third-person platform/shooting game - if you have the perseverance to make it past the frustrating parts.