Men in Black: Global Invasion Review – How Does It Compare With Pokémon GO?

Men in Black: Global Invasion is actually pretty decent as an AR Pokémon GO-like title. Although the game is somewhat in its bare-bones state, it shows lots of inner potential. Just like the Pokémon title, you walk around your neighborhood, seek out aliens and collect them.

Key game features

Fortunately, Men in Black: Global Invasion features much more than that. Rather than just catching stuff, you have to beat the alien in the first place to actually “catch” them. The procedure happens in first-person point of view, letting you see the process of firing down the alien.

Shooting

A thing to keep in mind is that your gun has something called a targeting reticle. This keeps moving around your screen during combat. Once it targets the enemy’s weak spot, tap it for maximum damage. In this way, it’s much better than the timing-based feature from Pokémon GO – far more satisfying and much less obtuse.

Battery

Every time you use your weapon, you’ll lose battery charge. The battery itself is rechargeable, but it will come with a cost. There are a variety of ways you can do to recharge it. The easiest and cheapest way to do this is to wait. However, you can always visit caches around the map or purchase batteries using real money from the store. No matter what, it’ll cost you something to use weapons more regularly.

Once you knock down the alien, you get to add it to your collection. Also, you could attempt to catch the same alien multiple times to level them up and increase their power. A higher star rating means stronger aliens, thus requiring much more firepower to take now. In general, it feels just like playing Pokémon GO, except that you replace the Pokémon with aliens.

Aliens collection

After having cute and weird aliens in your collection, you can set up teams and prepare for combats. Battles in Men in Black: Global Invasion is in turn-based single-player. This is exactly what you encountered in similar gacha RPGs like Marvel Strike Force or Summoner’s War. The aliens have different roles to act on, including tankers, healers, and DPS. Aside from managing the combat aspect, building a well-balanced team is also part of the challenge in Men in Black: Global Invasion.

Turn-based battles

Generally speaking, we really respect the turn-based battles inclusion, as that feels like a missing piece that completes the puzzle. While there are PvP and raids in Pokémon GO, we often feel like we're just trying to catch as many Pokémon as possible just because. That isn't the case with Men In Black: Global Invasion. The turn-based feature brings a unique feeling to the game since you really are trying hard to build a decent team with solid members. The game feels much more engaging and challenging, rather than mere character collecting like any other Gacha RPG.

In summary

Overall, Men in Black: Global Invasion turns out to be a pretty impressive title. The game utilizes the Gacha RPG factor pretty well with improvements from Pokémon GO. At the moment, the only major downside is the game’s early state. In the future, we’d love to see more features as well as new play modes to arrive. Also, we are a bit concerned about the pay-to-win factor in the future, when there are tougher challenges to face. As it is right now, though, that's totally not a big deal. If you are a fan of Pokémon GO or similar AR titles, Men in Black: Global Invasion is an awesome mix of the two and it’s definitely worth a try.