Thousands of alien ships take up position in low earth orbit. All eyes are now on a global mission to launch several rockets in the hope to discover their intentions.
Alan Doyle had seen the news. He couldn't get away from it. Even his fellow gamers continued to clog up bandwidth by talking about the new visitors. He didn't care about them. All Alan wanted was to level up on Battlespawn, to attain the rank to Star Captain and earn himself enough credits to ensure that he never ran out of health ever again.
During a rare trip outside, Alan noticed a small silver globe lying on the side of the road. As he picked it up, he saw hundreds more pushing up through the ground.
Alan tried to scream as the object melted like mercury and vanished into his palm. Before he blacked out, Alan saw others around him experiencing the same trauma.
The alien devices had selected their combatants and took them to the only Total Immersion Game worth playing. The humans weren't just fighting for their lives, they were fighting for the fate of their planet.
The invasion of Earth had begun -ONLINE!
My Opinion: 160 pages, $3.99, Available on Kindle Unlimited
The setup and the premise of the novel are interesting. Aliens invade earth and force everyone into a virtual game to determine earth’s future. The execution, however, feels blah.
The first 3% of the novel is fine. The setup of who the main character (MC) is, a young man who lives at home. He spends his time gaming. One day in the far future, aliens show up in the sky and while everyone is concerned about their appearance they don’t seem to be doing anything. So the MC continues to play is full immersion VR game. Then one day soon after, the whole population of earth is killed and their minds are forced into a virtual game so that the aliens can take over earth.
Ok, the premise is a bit of a stretch but the core idea isn’t bad and had potential. However, aside from the first quest level in the alien game, there’s no RPG stuff. More and more actual game mechanics are lost as the story progresses and it turns into a situation where the main character is just going through weird simulations.
Additionally, the way the story progresses is sort of broken. The main character does almost nothing to advance the story. Instead, his hacker friend, who moments after being sent into their game has already figured out ways to hack the alien system, tells the MC what’s really happening with the game and pushes the MC through just about every advancement.
Overall, a really unsatisfying read.
Score: 4 out of 10