Review: Eat Them! (2010) (PlayStation 3)

• August 6, 2011
• James Skemp
• gaming, review

I just recently picked up a copy of Eat Them!, for the PlayStation 3, as it was on sale for PlayStation Plus members.

According to some Eat Them! is a Rampage-like game, where you control a monster that lays waste to an area of a city. Indeed, this an extremely apt description, as playing this game brought to my mind fond memories of putting quarters/tokens into the Rampage machine, and later playing it, and later releases (such as for the Nintendo 64) to mind.

Where this game really shines is the monster creation aspect. Each level has three goal levels. Obtaining a bronze allows you to move on, while silver and gold unlock one new monster part each (with medals stacking, so completing a level the first time with a gold unlocks two parts). The game also features a fairly robust coloring system where you can color each part separately (by default you merely select three colors for the entire monster, from a rather large array).

The camera is above and behind the monster, and never caused issues, since you can rotate it at will. Some of the later parts result in a truly epic monster, allowing you to quickly destory the area you've been unleashed upon. The areas are different enough that I never found them tedious, although some are used in different mission types. Unfortunately, there does seem to be one map that is only used for a bonus mission (or I just got gold on it the first time through and haven't gone back to it yet).

There are a number of chapters (signified by comic books in the menu), containing either missions of destruction of particular objects, destruction amounting to a certain dollar amount, racing through a map, and occassionally bonus missions like eating a number of people or returning a number of animals back to the zoo. (The last might not sound like fun, but you basically grab and fling the animals, so it's rather enjoyable.)

The difficulty does increase as you get near the end, so you'll need to plan accordingly, and update your monsters to deal with the task.

Three downsides to the game seem to be that you can't delete a monster you've created (although you can edit it) and you are not told what a particular monster part will do when added, instead you have to just try it out. Finally the menu navigation can seem a little clunky at first, but you'll get used to it. These are minor points, however, and don't detract from the actual game play experience.

I finished the game, 100%, over the course of 4 days, and had an absolute blast doing so. I'll certainly be keeping the game on my PS3 for those moments when I just want to wreck havoc upon a city. 5 of 5 stars.

• review
• playstation 3