Now this is a story all about how, some Germans called Coreplay made a game called Ion Assault exclusively for XBLA, what a lucky bunch. I was clearly much too lazy to get that Fresh Prince joke to flow smoothly, no matter. On with the review!

The first thing that strikes me about this game, bearing in mind it’s German, is the unnecessary Japanese (well I presume it’s Japanese) font beneath the words ION ASSAULT on the front page, as well as the soundtrack being reminiscent of a bizarre techno-anime dystopian futureworld. I know these two had allegiances in World War 2, but this is almost ridiculous. Oh, and did I mention the music is also terrible?

Whenever you click anything, an irritating American robot-esque woman tells you exactly what you’ve just done, like the sort of irritating parrot that would exist in aforementioned anime-inspired dystopian future-world, specifically designed with the sole purpose of sending you absolutely batshit insane with sheer irritation. I know I paused the game, I’m the idiot who had the misfortune to press the start button. Okay, so enough about the terrible sound choices, games with terrible sound choices can also have good gameplay, right? Like… erm… well I can’t think of any examples right now, but I’m sure you guys can think of some.

The levels are split up into ‘territories’, each ‘territory’ having a certain amount of sublevels, with increasing difficulty. The basic premise of the game is to destroy asteroids and not die from arbitrarily appearing spaceships. This approach is fine and I understand that this is an £6.80/$9.99/800MS points game, but a smidgen of backstory wouldn’t have gone amiss? Like WHY am I blowing up asteroids, how does blowing up said asteroids better my cause and why on earth are various forms of spacecraft all trying to blow me up? The entire game is played out on a 2D surface, so this essentially makes it an arguably more advanced game of Asteroids. More advanced in the same way that a King Size Twix is slightly bigger than a regular Twix, considering that Asteroids was first released 30 years ago this is downright shameful. Has all that 30 years hailed some shiny special effects and the addition of colour?

On a much less pedantic note, unless I’m very much mistaken this game is set in space. Space, the name coined for there being quite a lot of space. Most notably, 3D space. Furthermore, what’s with this arbitrary border? I don’t understand why I’ve been boxed into such a small space for utterly no reason.

The controls, oh the controls! They’re configured in your standard left-stick to move around, right stick to aim set-up. However, some bright spark from Coreplay thought it’d be hilarious to completely mindscrew the part logical part of the brain, whilst hyperstimulating the off-pissery gland Causing frequent hurlings of the controller at innocent bystanders. Why? I hear you ask? Well, logic dictates that right = right and left = left. A swivel from left to right, in a clockwise motion would also equate to the same movement occuring onscreen. Sorry, you’re not a winner. Coreplay took it upon themselves to make left = right, black = white and orange = thursday.

These horrible controls also often lead to situations where you have to basically be static when firing, so as to not induce spontaneous rage. An occurrence I’d like to call ‘Resident Evil’ syndrome, the same reason I refuse to play ’survival-horror’ titles where you’re not allowed to survive by running and shooting, like any bloody sane person would. On that note, the difficulty can belikened to climbing up Everest. Only Everest is made of butter, and you’re wearing oven gloves as shoes and a tea cosy over your face. And you want to cry.

You basically blow up the asteroids and such by charging up an ion cannon thingy, that draws in particles from the outside environment. The more you draw, you more powerful your ion beam is. What is good is that the drawing in of particles can also destroy asteroids and minor spacecraft who have the misfortune to graze your hull. You know what the best part of this game is, without any sarcasm on my part at all? The fact that every good part of this game is basically lifted directly from the early PSN title Super Stardust HD. If you call Sony fanboy here, I will castrate you where you stand. If you’re female (god help us all), a simple punt will suffice. They even left out some of the good bits of SSHD, you had a goal; to save various planets planet from asteroids and invading alien fleets. It’s even exactly the same down to the ‘territories’, or as SSHD calls them PLANETS. The best part of both games, as a game mechanic, is the powerups. Various powerups that act as slowing down time, or temporarily making your weapon absolutely awesome. Like I said, lifted directly from SSHD.

The only good thing I can really say about this game is that in someways, it’s an allegory of life. We’re floating through space, aimlessly and on a path towards destruction. A real allegory for the nihilistic perspective on the universe. Shame nobody from Coreplay can even find the planet earth on a map of the earth.

Whether or not Coreplay deliberately copied this game is irrelevant and also libellous, it’s the fact that SSHD is genuinely a good game, actually one of the better games on the PSN. If you have the middle-class fortune of owning both consoles, don’t waste your money on this. Buy Super Stardust HD instead.