In this era of entertainment that we live in now that practically everything has it’s own following and thus in turn needs to get rebooted at some point in the franchise’s lifetime. It’s happen with the best of franchises and it’s happened with the worst of franchises. This time around, I’m looking at Ben 10 for the Nintendo Switch. This is based off of the Cartoon Network property currently being aired and is a rebranding of the property that has already gone though quite a few rebrandings to begin with. The newest cartoon plays off the reboot of the franchise by taking you back to the original series but instead of that semi-darker feel the original series had, this one has a more comical style. That could be because they’re trying to get the attention of a younger audience which isn’t a bad thing, it feels like the whole direction of Cartoon Network is going like this but I digress.
You play the role of Ben Tennyson, who is on summer vacation with is cousin Gwen and his grandfather, Max. Along their tour of the United States in the RV dubbed the Rust bucket, you’ll have to fight monster supervillians and help innocent people. However, you won’t be doing all this alone since while on this summer vacation, you get a hold of some alien technology. (It’s always alien technology) This is how Ben (You) can transform into one of ten aliens in the game. However, when you start playing you won’t have access to all the aliens but unlocking them is as simple as playing through the levels. And you happen to need an alien’s power that you don’t have access to yet.
For example, you will need Diamondhead at earlier points in the game but you won’t have him yet so you’ll have to play through the levels again to collect everything like the Sumo Slammer cards hidden in each level. A major issue I had right off the bat playing Ben 10 was that it doesn’t use the Pro Controller as a mode on control, which is a major hassle. You can use the Joy Cons as well as play on the Switch in mobile/off TV mode but not having the Pro Controller as an option is a pain to deal with. Another issue I had with the game was that the controls weren’t as tight as they needed to be. The Joy Cons weren’t receiving the attack commands every time and in a game where you have wave upon wave of enemies coming at you, you need to be able to rely on the controls working.
You also were tasked with not getting damaged during battle sometimes and the way the controls were freaking out, you had a 70-30 chance of making it out without taking damage. Another portion of the game that was annoying with the control issues was when you needed to use the alien special attacks, such as Fourarms having the ability to tear open certain doors. Not in the case of Fourarms but other aliens would have trouble using their ability because of the control issues. This reminded me of an action/min game like in the TellTale games but it didn’t work since the controls were acting up. Ben 10 is a 3d semi-side scroller/platformer and there were times in the game where the camera would act up and you would be able to see behind the wall when you were trying to make a turn around a corner. Issues like that shouldn’t happen with the camera in this era of gaming!
The game plays like a classic 90’s beat-em-up game where everything is breakable and you have to defeat every enemy in your path. When I say everything is breakable, I mean it and you will be at a disadvantage if you don’t break/punch everything as you will gain points that you can use to level up your aliens. Each alien has three abilities that you can power up with points so attack everything, as powering up will keep you from dying later. You’ll also be able to heal yourself with snacks and collected power the enemies you attack and more power you collect. The best comparison I can make to Ben 10 is that it reminds me of the Ninja Turtle games of the Super Nintendo Era or the X-Men games of the Arcades. Like I mentioned before, you will need to defeat everyone and collect everything, it will be an advantage later. It’s these reasons that I’m giving Ben 10 for the Nintendo Switch a 7/10. I would like to thank Outright Games/Wonacott Media for the review copy.