Chicken Invaders 4: Ultimate Omelette Christmas Edition

Small and simple games can sometimes take up more of your time than triple A titles, thanks to their addictive mechanics and immense replayability. Despite the lack of next-gen graphics engines or motion-captured character animations, the fun factor is what sets these games apart, making them timeless classics and instant favorites even for the most hardcore of gamers.

Chicken Invaders 4: Ultimate Omelette Christmas Edition is part of the legendary arcade series that portrays chickens as evil creatures that want to take over the universe, using all sorts of powerful weapons in the process. As usual, you control a small spaceship that's in charge of dealing with the threat and you must use everything at your disposal to destroy the chickens and their mothership, as well as avoid their deadly eggs along the way.

The game maintains the same classic and functional mechanics, with a 2D top-down view and rows of chicken descending in an orderly fashion toward the bottom of the screen. Your job is to shoot each one of them before they reach the ground, otherwise the mission fails and you have to retake it. Naturally, the speed at which the chickens descend increases with the difficulty level and it depends on how far into the game are you, not to mention the fact that the birds can also change formations and attack you in a variety of different ways.

In order to keep up with the stronger and stronger enemies, your ship gradually evolves over the course of the game as well, thanks to the various power-ups you get to pick-up as you advance. These usually provide you with a more powerful gun, although they can also have a wide variety of other effects, such as give you extra resistance to the enemy shells.

Technically, the game has been significantly refined over the years, which is mostly visible in when it comes to the smooth controls and the flawless mechanics that dictate the gameplay pace. Thus, as long as your eyes and hands are able to keep up with what happens on the screen, the ship can respond accordingly, without lag.

As you might have noticed, Chicken Invaders 4: Ultimate Omelette Christmas Edition has a Christmas theme going, which adds a few new levels and many red Santa hats. Other than that, the game is largely unchanged and maintains its appeal, thanks to the addictive mechanics and challenging gameplay.