Invasion

Xbox Live Indie Trial Game – Invasion

Invasion is a 2D shooter that brings me back to the mid to late “80′s” when 2D Broman shooters were all the rage in gaming. If your confused i’m talking about games like Contra, Cyberlip and countless others where tough guys with overcharged testosterone levels chew bubble and kill aliens for breakfast. Invasion is  an action adventure game developed by Heart Attack Machine as a Xbox Live Indie Game or XBLIG for 80 MSP. It released 11-11-2011.

The main menu screen featured sub menus of  Trial Game, Controls, Settings, Buy Full Game and Exit. The button layout via the Xbox 360 gamepad: Trooper controls: LS-move, X-primary attack, Y-switch weapon, A-jump, LS-press to crouch. Ninja controls: LS-move, RB-block, X-primary attack, Y-secondary attack, A-jump. Combos: Slam-XY, slide-XXX, dive-Y, charge-XXY. The controls in the trial game of Invasion were pretty good. The aiming up with the bumper buttons was weird otherwise the controls felt good.

The protagonist in Invasion is a commando by the name of Stokton. At the start of the trial level of Invasion your shown Stokton speeding on a futuristic hover bike chatting with Commander through text boxes. The humor seems forced in the opening scene’s text dialog. The story early in has to do with Stokton infiltrating  enemy territory. After getting hit by an explosive object Stokton crashes. The early scene on foot has you approaching two enemy guards chatting about the legendary Contra cheat code. Its a great in-game refeerence to a game that obviously gave influence to Invasion.

Gameplay in the trial involved simple shooting. Shooting enemies, trees and picking up different guns. The Plasma-rifle, Shotgun and Missile launcher destroyed enemies pretty easily. Enemies ranged from human soldiers, cybernetic soldiers, robots and mutant alien creatures. In the background you can see huge moving enemies but i don’t know if you can kill them or not. The last section of gameplay featured 2D jetpack gameplay. You fly up and have to shoot enemies along the way. Very classic fun gameplay.

The settings in Invasion ranged from snow-capped mountains, destroyed cities and forest area. The visuals reminded me of the 16-bit glory days. The music was nice featuring a catchy tune. The sound design wasn’t that bad either. The gameplay did triumph over all else in my opinion. The writing needs to step it up as it seems forced and not very funny despite trying to be. The atmosphere was good and did give me the whole apocalyptic broman 2D shooter vibe which this game is clearly trying to give. Thanks for reading.