Tired of blasting alien invaders? How about a twist of the poultry variety? Chicken Invaders: The Next Wave makes no bones about its inspirations. This game takes the concepts of all the great old-school arcade shooters like Space Invaders and Asteroids and wraps them into a colorfully designed shooter that feels like it could have just as easily been a free flash game.
Your mouse controls the trusty little ship, and the two mouse buttons launch your primary weapons and extra-special missiles. You'll find yourself fighting Space Invaders-like waves of hostile chickens, periodically shooting down asteroids, bosses and other craziness in the process. It's a goofy game, but an occasionally challenging one--sometimes because it actually shows flashes of understanding of what makes a good shooter, and other times because it opts to make the color of the enemy fire (white, because they're eggs, get it?) blend in with all the other kookiness going on onscreen, thus making it stupidly difficult to actually see where the fire is coming from.
Shooter fans will likely garner some amusement from Chicken Invaders: The Next Wave, but they won't want to pay full price for it. It's a legitimate distraction that wears pretty thin pretty quickly, and there just isn't a compelling enough product here to really make it worth your time.
