Chicken Invaders: The Next Wave Demo

The Chicken Invaders series is going strong for quite a while now, with nice sequels to keep the adventure going for as long as possible. Obviously, the improvements are not monumental and they do not change the pace of the game at all, but there are enough new gimmicks to keep you on edge. Hence, everyone’s favorite chicken shmup is back again, with yet another invasion threatening the Earth.

Chicken Invaders: The Next Wave is as straightforward as possible, which means that it barely makes any effort to change too much about itself. Gameplay-wise, everything is more or less the same, while the story is only slightly changed to avoid making you feel like you have played it before. Even so, most of the game is just more of the same with flashier graphics, which is not at all a bad thing.

Hence, the story tells you that the invasion from the previous game was just the beginning, or most likely a diversion created by the chickens to make the people of Earth believe they are weak. Contrarily, it would appear that the chickens have yet to reveal their true strength, which means that you must hop into the spaceship and go on yet another campaign against the ruthless invaders.

Power-ups are still an important part of the gameplay, especially in the later levels, when things get tough. As such, you can pick up a variety of special upgrades for your weapon, which add firepower and modify your attack in all sorts of crazy ways. Lightning bolts, lasers and a few other goodies await you, although you can easily lose it all by succumbing to a well-placed egg. Speaking of which, you have a limited number of lives you can lose, after which it’s game over and you have to take it from the top.

As far as the technical aspects are concerned, the title at hand tries to improve over the previous episodes, and it manages to do so in almost every regard. The textures are much smoother than before, while the animations are more fluid as well. Obviously, the backgrounds are still black and lacking any kind of detail, but they were never a big part of the game anyway.

Even if this is more of a remake than a proper sequel, Chicken Invaders: The Next Wave does a very good job at resurrecting the fun of old-school shoot ‘em ups. Not only that, but the difficulty level is quite unforgiving as well, so you might have to work hard for your victories.