Few cartoons have changed as much as Ben 10. Ben has gone from a ten year old with access to a few aliens to a budding teenager with access to thousands. In Ben 10 Omniverse 2 there are  10 aliens to chose from, with each being rather fun to play. You’ll fight as such classic aliens like Four Arms and XLR8 alongside new ones like BullFrag and my new favorite Bloxx against the Incursion Army. Sadly that’s where the party ends, as the rest of this game is worse than Vilgax’s morning breath.

Ben 10 Omniverse 2 is a strange formula of half runner-style, half beat em up gameplay. While that combination isn’t a bad concept, the execution couldn’t be worse. It creates a harsh limit on what you can do in the game, completely destroying any hope of depth. This is only worsened by the fact that you can only use 3 of the 10 aliens at Ben’s disposal at any given time. The aliens are divided into three types: light, medium, and heavy. Each class has a different function, but it feels more tacked on than anything else. Light can jump over barriers, medium can shoot projectiles, and heavies can break objects and withstand damage. Thankfully each alien can learn special moves to spice things up, but as soon as one is level three there isn’t much stopping them. The only thing truly stopping your progress are the story sequences that only barely manage to move the plot forward. The ending is also extremely anti-climatic, with a single boss that was not even mentioned anywhere else.

For a newly released retail game, this felt far more like a cheap phone app. The emphasis on runner gameplay gives the game complete lack of length and even less replayability.  I don’t normally believe that length should be used to determine a game’s value, but with just an hour and a half from start to finish is ridiculous. Everything from the textures to the enemies feel cheap and cobbled together. They’re even riddled with glitches in case you even attempted to see any good in this tremendously awful shovelware. There are better Ben 10 games to occupy your time with and this one should be avoided at all costs.