I decided to ask for a review code for scrolling space shooter CounterAttack because it looked like a game that would be fun to play. I decided I would worry later about how to shoe-horn this into a horror blog. I have always loved the idea of scrolling shoot em-ups, yet it is fair to say I am damn awful at them. CounterAttack is designed to be a game that will take multiple attempts to beat, and with weapons and power-ups constantly being unlocked, and a branching pathway of levels to take, this was one game I kept returning back to time and time again.
This takes place in the far future, a time when humans have completely automated many of their more laborious processes. One day, a malfunction with the A.I core of a remote mining facility causes the legions of automated robots to be reprogrammed with a new mission. The A.I designates humanity a terminal threat and without warning unleashes a devastating war against them. Playing as a soldier in charge of a powerful state of the art experimental spaceship, you are tasked with first stopping the assault on Earth, before taking the fight to the rogue mining facility, with the aim of destroying the A.I core.
I had so much fun playing this, something which might not appear obvious when you first boot the game up. It is fair to say that the graphics and music are both quite poor. The thirty two levels take place against fuzzy backgrounds light on detail, the enemy design is uniformly dull, with the boss battles being against large angular spaceships that are completely forgettable. I guess being kind, you could say the uninspired enemy design could be a result of the A.I creating robots for functional reasons, rather than to look at all interesting. The music meanwhile sounds almost placeholder, arcady in sound, reminding me of the type of music you would hear from an X-Box Live Arcade game from the Xbox 360 days. It is darn good then how insanely addictive the gameplay loop is. As you play, you unlock various attachments for your ship, there are in fact over five hundred different attachments to unlock! In the three or four hours I spent playing this to eventual completion, I only unlocked around 7% of the overall unlocks! There are a lot of levels, but due to the branching pathways, I only experienced around half of those levels. Mainly you are just shooting everything in your path until you get to the boss, but some levels include asteroid fields, others allow you to pilot larger spaceships, one particularly difficult level had you navigating the narrow corridors of a space station.
Bullet hell this may not be, I would describe this more as enemy hell, in that you are frequently being swarmed by hundreds of very weak enemy ships at a time. It was so much fun blowing these all away with the impressive inventory you have. Enemies are constantly dropping power-ups, which you can sink into the various weapon systems your ship has. Each of the eight ships have options to level up speed, spread, side guns, beam, missiles, increase damage caused, plasma and drones. By the time you get through a few levels your tiny ship is spewing out screen filling ballistics that instantly decimate most of the enemies you come across. The game can be played online with up to four players at once, but I didn't try that part of the game.
I liked how dark and serious the story was, each level opens and closes with your commander giving the orders. This is all ruined somewhat by the eight different pilots you can choose from. Nearly every one is tonally off from the otherwise serious story. Atrociously written dialogue that condenses their dialogue into little soundbites sounding like they were written by a chatbot, with the teenage looking pilots standing out like a sore thumb from the otherwise dark feeling world.
This might be an ugly game with a forgettable soundtrack and boring enemy design, but it is saved by how darn fun and addictive it is. Every attempt, no matter how short lived, had me unlocking ever more useful attachments, while the eight ships all have their own unique special attacks that made them feel varied. Ignore the pathetic dialogue of the ship pilots and the story is perfectly fine. As it is, I loved my time with this, I can only imagine how much better this would have been if time had been dedicated to making the visuals and sound match how amazing the gameplay loop of CounterAttack is.
SCORE:
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