Parent's Guide: Invizimals: The Alliance - Age rating, mature content and difficulty

Invizimals: The Alliance is an augmented reality game for the PS Vita. Making use of the system's built in camera, it's up to you to scour the rooms in your house to find creatures known as Invizimals. Lure them out and complete a task, and you'll be able to catch them, give them a nickname, and then take them into battles, in a game that's kind of Pokemon-lite - only with just the battles.

Divided up into two halves - catching, and battling, each part of Invizimals takes a markedly different approach. When catching Invizimals, you'll have to hunt them out first, using the camera on your PS Vita. This in itself can be something of a challenge - whether you're having to listen closely to hear it, track a cursor on screen, or seek out an object in your house that's a certain colour, getting the Invizimals to show isn't easy. Once they've reared their head, you have to complete a task they set, whether it's tracing a picture, building a tower, dodging projectiles, collecting gems by moving your PS Vita around, or, bizarrely enough, singing them a lullaby.

The battles, meanwhile, are much more straightforward. With each of the Vita's four buttons corresponding to a different attack, it's up to you to take direct control of your Invizimal, as you face off with your foe. With each move having a "cool down" time before you can use it again, along with taking differing lengths of time to charge up before it actually attacks, there's a real trade off here, as you decide between speed and power.

In terms of things children may struggle with, however, there are a few things that are of note. First off, the game isn't really as responsive or accurate as it needs to be to cater to the younger players. If you're pointing the system at one of the game's AR cards, for example (which come bundled with the system when you buy it, and are required to play the game - so it's worth checking you haven't lost them!), any sudden moves can make the system "lose" what you were pointing at, before everything jumps across the screen as it finds it again and regains its bearings. It's confusing to explain, but can be as confusing to younger kids, who don't have the subtlety of movement required to dodge an in-game projectile while keeping the system pointing at a card. The time limits are equally limiting for the game, as you're given only a few seconds to "find" an Invizimal when you go to catch it - older, more experienced players should have few problems here, but those who are just starting out may find they simply can't react quick enough to placate the game. With that in mind, Invizimals is one that's probably best suited to a slightly older audience.

With nothing in the way of swearing or sex, the only thing of note for parents in Invizimals: The Alliance is some very, very minor cartoon violence. As your creatures battle each other, they'll swipe, and otherwise fire projectiles at each other, although with no realistic impacts, and no signs of the creatures taking damage beyond their health bar decreasing, it's all suitably minor.

Age Ratings

Format Reviewed: PS Vita