Friday 19 May 2006
Hide the cattle and cover your behind - the aliens are back. Apparently, Cryptosporidium 137's boss, Pox, has been captured by the Russians, so the Furon warrior has to conquer Earth all over again - this time during the free-love movement of the '60s.

The biggest and best news about this spoofy actioner is that it has adopted a more free-form, open-world approach. The first game was actually very linear and required each mission to be solved in a certain way. Not so with the sequel, which enables you to take missions from multiple sources and solve them using a variety of ways. Your tasks will require you to wreak interstellar havoc in several different locations across the globe too.

You may find Crypto bodysnatching hippies in 1960s San Francisco, then blasting apart an Austin Powers-like version of London using his saucer's formidable weaponry. If he steps out and gets seen or - worse - overpowered, he can use a new, 'mind flash' power to temporarily freeze the action and mind-wipe any humans within range.

If the action gets too hectic - as can happen when you're in Japan during the reign of Godzilla - Crypto can fall back on his eight-weapon arsenal. Some of the new gear includes the Dislocator, a sort of force bounce that sends its targets careening all around the environment, and Meteor Strike - a pretty self-explanatory attack that's impressive even before its upgraded to Meteor Shower or Meteor Storm.