ION Assault

Take a blender. Add a generous dollop of Asteroids, and a heaped tablespoon of Geometry Wars. Blitz for two minutes. The result? ION Assault.

ION Assault is a curious game. From the fact that the way it’s written seems to make the first word boom with importance, to the fact that it is a healthy blend of two existing games it’s just strange. The first time you play it, you won’t like it. That’s strange.

The more you play, however, the more the game will grow on you. A single player campaign sees you travel through over 20 areas, comprising of four sectors with five levels and a boss battle each. So far so, well, every space shooter ever. The twist here is in the weapons. There’s none of this rapid fire malarky here. ION Assault is all about charging. Hold your trigger down and your ship sucks up ions (or IONs, if you want to be in keeping with the game) – the more ions you suck up, the stronger your blast.

It’s in this curious mechanic that the marmite gameplay rears its head. It takes a bit of getting used to. To smash a massive asteroid you’ll need a couple of fully charged shots. What makes it harder is that you’ll also find smaller asteroids floating around, as well as increasingly difficult spawning enemies. This means that you’re incredibly vulnerable while charging, leading to death or ricocheting off every rock in the cosmos following some dodgy steering. When it works, however, ION Assault is a joy to play. If you spend some time getting to grips with the weapons, and the power-ups you’ll collect along the way, you’ll find the the game just eats your time.

Graphically, it’s an impressive title. It’s taken the particle effects of Geometry Wars and tweaked them – it’s not as pretty, and there’s never as much going on as you’d find in Geometry Wars, but it’s still an eye-catching title. So much so, in fact, that I look forward to getting the Vortex Bomb as a power-up because as well as being incredibly functional it’s pretty to see the orange swirlies.

Sound-wise it’s pretty much what you’d expect from a space-based particle shooter thingy. One notable exception is the achievements. As well as the usual “plink”, you’re treated to a seductive “Achievement Unlocked” from the ship’s computer/sat-nav.

There are multiplayer options, of course. You can play the game in four player co-op although there seems barely enough on screen to play during solo play, at times, so I imagine that four-way co-op can become somewhat of an particle blur.


Posted

in

,

by

Tags:

Comments

Leave a Reply