I found 'Under The Skin' to be enjoyable and very unique, with a merry spirit throughout and plenty of fun cute violence
Other Platforms ~ None
Players ~ 1
Genre ~ 3rd-person action game
Developer ~ Capcom
Under the Skin is a peculiarly Japanese-flavoured game, which I'm therefore surprised to see available for western consoles.
The main premise is that you play as an alien called Cosmi, who must travel around various locations (there are a total of 8) and try to obtain coins from the various humans scattered around the place.
This can be done in various ways, the main one being to attack them with various weapons.
In your primary form, Cosmi, you're just this rubbish little bouncy blue alien in a ridiculous diaper, so in order to get yourself a bit of camouflage and protection, Cosmi can use a special alien ray to 'zap up' earthlings into the gun.... there are various little pink saucers floating around the level, and Cosmi must then take the 'full' gun to one of the saucers to deposit the contents and thus transmogrify into the captured human. With exceptions, usually when you are hit when in 'human form', Cosmi will pop into his underwear and have to run about like that until he changes into a different human.... this allows him considerable 'get away' time usually, and is very beneficial to him indeed.
This is where the weapons come in, because each human carries a different selection of weaponry.... little kids tend to carry 'prank' weapons such as fart-gas or drawing-pins, middle-aged women often carry vacuum-cleaners (which help to suck in coins from all over the level - they can be very useful !), while special characters such as Resident Evil ones will lug around fancy Rocket Launchers and so forth.
That, combined with the very distinctive different flavours of area, means that each different level has it's own feeling... for example, in the Wild West world there are a lot of cowboy-looking guys who tote shotguns, and everywhere has a 'Wild West' feel to it.... while in Pranksylvania everything has a manic sort of comedy-horror theme to it, and so forth.
In most levels you must also compete against one of a variety of different boss-like 'bad guys' , who will typically be running about the place causing disruption, coin spillage or rapid collection, and chaos and explosions and unexpected weaponry-effects , around the place.
The whole game is very fast-paced , with you always going about trying to capture the most 'tasty' looking humans, who have the best weapons and who you haven't 'drained' already, because for quite a while after 'using' a human their inventory will be empty, and you then would be well advised to try and avoid accidentally scooping them up in the gun, since then you need to first dispose of them before being able to gather up a well-equipped human and take them to a different saucer - as the saucers move around each time they are used, and the usual time-limit for each level is 10 minutes, you can imagine that it's all very merry, quickly paced, jovial fun.
The game makes no effort to justify the violence , with the main premise basically being that you're trying to prove that you're the most mischevious alien ever, and want to earn a name for yourself as a famous michief-maker... and the sheer insanity is wonderful, in my opinion.
The game is really very short indeed, but i got my copy for about a fiver and i reckon that for such a low price, I've had a great deal of joy out of it ! :) I'm certainly not too bothered by that, as long as it's fun while it lasts... which in my opinion, it succeeds at doing
yeah, it's not going to last too long before you reach the end.. but, it does have great replay value with different difficulty settings and opportunity to get a better 'game rating' (ie, by losing less throughout the game, and saving less, mainly from the look of it) , and versus modes and stuff openign up after completion of each level in single-player mode.
The people themselves are like ridiculous charactatures, with fat polka-dot dressed women, tiny little kids, big gruff Wild West sherrifs, plenty of zombies in Racoon City, and so forth.... and when you play tricks on them, the humans can get pretty riled up - with their irritation often escalating into a wild, and not uncommonly dangerous, stampede.... at times like those, a crafty quick change into the guise of a human will shake them off the trail and let you either sneak out the side, or a good tactic can be to take advantage of the situation and attack the gathered crowd with various weapons, especially heavy ones, in order to cause a large spillage of coins.
In conclusion, i wasn't sure what to expect when i decided to buy and try this game, but i'm happy that i decided to try something a little bit weird-looking because I have found it to be enjoyable and very unique, with a merry spirit throughout and plenty of cute violence.
(^-^)