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

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.