At a glance...

Reviewer	Platform	Publisher	Developer	Players
Matt Bailey	Xbox 360	Black Inc.	Coreplay	1-4 (Local, Xbox Live)
Requirements
Xbox Live Gold subscription required for online play

Ion Assault review

Ion Assault is the first Xbox Live Arcade game from Germany, as the press releases like to point out. It's also (as far as I can tell) still the only Xbox Live Arcade game from Germany. Thus it is the best Xbox Live Arcade game from Germany. It may not have taken much to earn that title, but is it something it deserves?

In fact, it is. Ion Assault is a twin-stick shooter with an original take on the genre. Like Geometry Wars and its contemporaries, you move your ship around a confined rectangular area with the left stick, and aim at your enemies with the right stick. The difference is that you aren't simply firing some cannon with unlimited ammo; the "ions" in the game's title refer to the particles which fill up the screen, which you sort of hoover up and fire at enemies. These tiny particles are scooped up by your ship when you hold down the left trigger as you move through them, building up into a more powerful projectile. At any time you can release the trigger, sending a flurry of these deadly blobs in whatever direction you aim; the more you've sucked up, the more powerful your shot.

This change to the shooting has quite a significant impact on the gameplay; you can't simply repeatedly whack the right trigger and hope to hit the right enemies. You need to time your shots, and move around the map - avoiding all the dangerous obstacles that litter it - in order to pick up the particles. It's more careful and precise, and yet doesn't lose any of the energy and momentum that makes the genre so enjoyable. There's also a joy of getting to float through the soup of particles, and aiming to collect them as they bounce off the surrounding walls. In a further shake up to the gameplay, the actual aim of the game isn't to destroy the enemies, it's to destroy the asteroids. The wide range of creatures which inhabit these worlds will attack you, and if you're not careful, will be the death of you, but you only need to kill them in order to get on with your main task of taking out the big lumps of rock. In fact, the faster you remove objects with ion particles, the more enemies the game will throw at you, attempting to balance out the gameplay, but also offering great scoring opportunities. You could take it slowly, and make it a much easier ride for yourself, but then you certainly won't find yourself in the Top 10 on the Xbox Live leaderboards.

And that's a big part of what Ion Assault is all about; the elusive high score. It's this desire to achieve larger numbers that helps make the game so addictive, but it also goes some way to making up for the game's biggest downside; it's actually quite a short game. I finished the main single player campaign in about two and a half hours, and felt the game was really getting into it's stride when things came to an end. There are four worlds, each containing five levels which are capped off by bosses, and it's a testament to the quality of the game that we really could have done with more of it. Added to the mix, however, are some multiplayer features. There is co-op available for 2 players locally, which is certainly a welcome addition. A versus mode mixes things up a bit with support for up to four players online or offline, and sees you trying destroy an object defended by your opponent(s) while they aim to do the same to yours. It's not as fun as the main mode, and curiously still features the old control scheme of turning the craft left or right with the right thumbstick rather than pointing it in a direction as the new scheme allows.

Another feature to lengthen the game appeared in the latest title update in a new mode called Survival. You start off with two lives, face a lot of incoming enemies, and well, need to survive! Like in the campaign, you can suck up particles to fire them, and also earn extra lives for each 100,000 points you earn. It came alongside the aforementioned change in the control scheme, with the ability to flick between the two just a press of the "Back" button away.

As well as being a rather enjoyable game, Ion Assault is also rather good looking. I think you could go as far as calling it pretty, with lots of impressive particle effects, plenty of colour, and a rather dizzying array of action on screen. It can get a little confusing at times, but ultimately you get used to the chaos and just enjoy the visual show.

Ratings

Overall	Ion Assault is an interesting take on the twin-stick shooter, proving to be enjoyable and additive. It's replayability makes it worth the 800 Microsoft Points asking price, despite its short length.	8/10

Click here for more Ion Assault reviews.

Copyright Information

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons License, except where otherwise noted.

Smileys taken from Crack's Smilies.