Little green men fighting Russian Red Army soldiers with a multitude of armaments and troops is the essence of Stalin vs. Martians, but then the title is pretty self-explanatory. When I first found a news article talking about Stalin vs. Martians I thought the idea was crazy and amusing and would be a lot of fun.

Crazy and amusing it was, but the fun aspect of it is debatable. Being a fan of the real-time strategy genre, though not necessarily the most skilled player, I had high hopes for Stalin vs. Martians. I mean, the trailer has Stalin dancing to techno music; it seemed goofy and great to me.

Stalin vs. Martians starts with a message to stand for the national anthem. I elected to sit, but I listened to the song. If you haven’t heard the Russian National Anthem, it’s a nice song, but it’s long. I did get a bit anxious to get into the game but thought that the fact that the entire song was played went with the randomness of Stalin vs. Martians.

Once the splash screen appeared after the song, I decided to check out the options menu. There I had a good laugh with the options of “Do You Like Cats? Yes/No” and setting the keyboard type to Orthodox or Revolutionary. I set the keyboard to Revolutionary, set the cats question to Yes and started the game.

Greeted by none other than Joseph Stalin himself in letter format, I was given my first mission, which can be boiled down to “kill the people from the Red Planet using the Red Army.” I was surprised that there wasn’t an option to play as either the Russians or Martians. Nope, Russians only, ah well.

Armed with my men, tanks and the letter from Stalin, I set out to destroy the Martian menace from the motherland. Throughout the conflict, I noticed that the environments were colorful, had a nice bit of detail and sometimes were destructible via tank blasts.

Just as colorful as the world, if not more colorful, were the foot soldiers of the opposing force. Small, many-colored and quick, these little guys took out my tanks pretty swiftly so I had to rely on all of the Ivans in my army. Whenever I clicked on a foot soldier or tank, it would occasionally greet me with “My name is Ivan, I love you,” so I can only guess they’re all named Ivan, hence the term Ivans. I’m glad they are supportive and caring about me as a military leader, but that’s quite a few guys named Ivan who are fighting off the Martians.

Other lines said by the Ivans were things like “Speak Russian or die!” and “Ah! I’m dying!” I felt the humor that was shown in the trailer with techno-dancing Stalin carried over with the Ivans, their random confession of love for their commander and their breaking of the fourth wall with “Click me please!”

Of course, the reason Ivan and his fellow Ivans were calling out “Ah! I’m dying!” were the large green one-eyed Martian equivalent of tanks. These large creatures pretty easily wiped out my foot soldiers, meaning a need for more fire power. The best quality of these Martian “tanks” is the sound they make when firing their guns. It sounds like someone sitting at a microphone and literally saying “pew peeew.” In addition to the “tanks,” the foot soldier aliens made odd little noises as well.

These sounds, coupled with the wide and weird variety of music, create a definite goofiness about the atmosphere of the game, definitely not your usual World War II RTS experience. The sounds were great for a laugh, and the humor of the shout outs in addition to the options and starting video all fit well with the humor set for the game

However, the game itself wasn’t always fun. After the original briefing via a letter from Stalin, I was thrown right into gameplay. Now, since I’ve played RTS games before I was able to figure out generally what did what and who could attack who. Although, not everyone playing will have this luxury, and I’m not sure I quite got how everything worked.

When selecting a large number of troops, there are four options you’re presented with: move, hold position, attack and stop. Pretty self-explanatory I’d say, but does that mean that pressing attack then clicking will cause troops to attack while on the move? Or just attack a single clicked on unit?

A tutorial at the start of the game to explain how things were setup would have been helpful since I didn’t make it very far based on simply guessing. Along with a tutorial, a difficulty setting in the options menu would have been helpful. I seemed to be less than the best general to control Stalin’s army at the current setting.

I heard Ivan and his buddy Ivans say “I’m dying!” quite often while being barraged by “pew peeeew” sounds throughout. I’m not the greatest at RTS games, but I can normally make it through them. It just seemed a lot of time was put into the humor and making sure the game kept its crazy and weird aspects in check. But it didn’t quite keep the difficulty in check.

Overall, what Stalin vs. Martians has going for it is its whacky premise and execution of said whacky premise. But, that doesn’t quite make up for the learning curve for newbies and the difficulty of the game itself even in the very early levels (though this may be due to my own skill, who knows?). If you’re looking for a game that will both amuse and frustrate/challenge you, I’d say pick up Stalin vs. Martians. Although, I’d be ready to face that aforementioned challenge early and often, let’s hope you make it further than I did.