Simon the Sorcerer: Who'd Even Want Contact?!

aka: Simon 5, Simon the Sorcerer 5: Kto nawiąże kontakt?, Simon the Sorcerer : Rencontre Avec Les Extraterrestres, Simon the Sorcerer: L'Invasione Degli Extraterrestri, Simon the Sorcerer: Wer will schon Kontakt?
Moby ID: 45155

Description official descriptions

Simon the Sorcerer: Who'd Even Want Contact?! is the second German entry in the Simon the Sorcerer series. After the happenings of Chaos Happens Simon settles down but suddenly the fairyland gets attacked by aliens which kidnap Simon's girlfriend Alix. Of course this means Simon has to rescue her while traveling to locations like a Caribbean beach or space.

The game is a traditional humorous point & click adventure where the player explores his environment, takes everything he finds and solves item-based puzzles. Some of them have multiple solutions and depending on the player's choices they influence the ending and the psycho-analysis he receives at the end. Of course there are also many multiple-choice dialogues which are noticeable shorter than in Chaos Happens. The handling uses the usual "two-click"-system: left click to use and right click to examine. As in Chaos Happens there is a notebook which lists finished and open tasks and a help system. For every task there are three hints available - from a small poke in the right direction to an almost-solution. Also worth mentioning is the new graphics style in cel-shading.

Spellings

  • Simon the Sorcerer. Тупые пришельцы - Russian spelling

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Reviews

Critics

Average score: 73% (based on 28 ratings)

Players

Average score: 2.7 out of 5 (based on 7 ratings with 1 reviews)

Slightly better than the last one but not up to standard of the Simon series

The Good
The main improvement of this game in comparison to the last Simon game is the graphics, the layout from the previous game (3D characters with 2D background) was kept but this time the characters were created using Cel shaded that looks much better than "Chaos Happens", the background art also improved over the last game and some of them are looking quite beautiful.

Fortunately the point and click interface was kept and Simon responds with no problems to the player commands, so no complaints here.

While as with the previous game the story and dialogs are the main weakness. There are some good and amusing scenes such the one with the depressed war bot (an obvious reference to Marvin from "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"), the naughty scene with Alix recorded on Simon's video camera and her fight with him at the end were also quite good. It seems a shame Alix wasn't feature more in this game.

The Bad
Besides the parts mention above the plot is still bad. In fact it manages to get worse from "the hero that needs to save the kingdom" of the last game to fighting against invading aliens (What?! were that came from?) not to mention Simon's visit to the city of the mole people (again with the "what?!"). I honestly didn't know what the writers thought.

As with the previous game this game as well made Simon an American and his original personality of the first three games has vanished. Now he acts like a total wanker (Ha! they should left him as British, then he would know what I'm talking about). Some of the characters, like Red Riding Hood, are pretty annoying in their failed attempt be obnoxiously funny and the rest are just forgettable.

The Bottom Line
While this game is slightly better than the last Simon game in terms of graphics and has more funny moments (although in general the plot is worst), it still suffers from the problems of the previous game: it's just not funny and a game which claims to be a worthy successor in the Simon series must have that.

Windows · by Ingsoc (1366) · 2011

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Contributors to this Entry

Game added by Patrick Bregger.

Additional contributors: Jeanne, POMAH, formercontrib, game nostalgia, przygodomania.pl.

Game added February 8, 2010. Last modified February 22, 2023.