Gamertell

Title: Ion Assault
Price: $8.00
System(s): Xbox Live
Release Date: September, 23, 2009
Publisher (Developer):Coreplay (Black Inc.)
ESRB Rating: Everyone +10 animated blood, fantasy violence
Pros: awesome music, fun game play, reminiscing of that old Asteroids computer game.
Cons: difficulty goes up too quickly, hard to figure out power ups.
Overall Score: One thumb up, on sideways; 89/100; B+; * * * 1/2 out of five.

If you are a fan of those old space adventure games like Asteroids, then you will love Coreplay’s Ion Assault.

It’s a new arcade game available through Xbox Live where you can battle space aliens and other creatures while shooting at any and all asteroids that may be blocking you. The game takes place on one screen where you fly your ship, spinning around to shoot an aliens or any space debris that is in your way. As you destroy different things you earn power ups including augmented speed and a bigger radius for which to collect destroyed particles.

The music in the game is very uplifting and almost cosmic sounding which makes it perfect for destroying aliens.

There is also a multiplayer mode where you can play with or against your friends (or strangers) over Xbox Live or from home.


Nuthin' Better than a Little Space Exploration

Ion Assault's not a new concept by any means but Coreplay did a good job upping the ante. By adding power ups and space aliens (who are rather ruthless), it adds a whole new feel to the game. I got into this title right away whereas I usually tend to stray away from the other incarnations of this type of game.

What also made this title superior is the controls. I had no trouble flying all over the screen and spinning to fire at surrounding enemies. You have to hold down the left trigger to charge up your blast if you want to make any sort of impact with your weapon, which takes a bit of time to get use too especially when you have a alien flying right at you.

The graphics and music are really what make the game. When you destroy an asteroid, it bursts into a thousand ion particles which you can collect to score points. It also sometimes bursts into smaller asteroids which need to be destroyed. The ion particles are thousands of brightly colored dust particles that shoot all over the screen making beautiful patterns against the black sky. So the game is constantly filled with bright colors and patterns to contrast the dark of space.

Again, the music is very nice and compliments the game well. It stays the same for a while until you start to move up in levels. If they sold a soundtrack for this game I would snatch it up. And you can play multiplayer with your friend locally for a change. It’s nice to finally have a multiplayer game that you can play with that second controller you bought.


Aliens are No Match for Ion Particles

The game starts out nice, fun and simple. You fly around and kill some aliens. I was barely at level 3 when it started to get hard and I kept having to restart the level. It seemed like I hardly had enough time to charge my weapon after the last shot when here comes another alien flying at me full speed. Sometimes when you are flying away from the alien, you smash into a stray asteroid. It is nice that you can continue from the same level when you lose all your ships but I think it would be better if they slowed down the difficultly progression.

I also had trouble with the power ups primarily because I didn’t always understood what they did or they seemed to do nothing. I’m sure they did something but I couldn’t figure out what and, half the time I got blown up while trying to figure it out.

Other times I knew what the power up did but it didn’t seem effective. Like when I used one that caused the gravity field to get bigger and I could suck in more things. I suppose this is helpful for when you are collecting particles but it also causes everything around you to come flying at you, which means you have to dodge every dangerous item.

Nice Asteroids

So with it’s awesome graphics and even better music, this game is pretty fun for anyone looking for a quick little space shooter. The game has more than 20 levels, more than 30 different enemies to attack and a boss every four levels. Plus it was in made in Germany (and you know the Germans make good stuff).

This is a fun game as long as you can handle the the steep difficulty progression and periodically confusing power ups.

Read [Xbox.com] Site [Ion Assault]