Since first hearing about Onslaught, I had a cautiously optimistic approach to the WiiWare FPS. While I was glad that a developer was willing to take a chance to release a shooter on the downloadable service, it left some doubts floating in my head. After playing the game for myself last night, most of those can be put to rest.
Onslaught is a FPS (First Person Shooter), the first of its kind to release on WiiWare. It cost 1,000 Wii points ($10), and will take up 307 blocks of memory. So be sure and clean house before trying to download.
Before getting into my impressions, I’ll let you know that I played through stage 4, so I put in about 45 minutes into the game. Which is why this is an impressions post, and not a review.
Going off my first impression, I’d say that Onslaught has been my best 1,000 Wii point purchase so far. When you first load up Onslaught, you’re given the option of playing single player or getting together with others online through Nintendo’s WiFi connection. Like I said earlier, I played through the 4th stage, and unfortunately I wasn’t able to connect to the online modes of the game. My internet was working, but for some reason it wasn’t wanting to connect. Not a great first demonstration.
Luckily, my single player experience made up for the lack of a connection. Unfortunately the first aspect of the game to show up is the story that Onslaught tries to tell to setup the action. It involves cyborg insects, and mankind colonization. I’ve setup everything you need to know about the story, so do yourself a favor and skip over the narrative sequences.
I’m usually a big fan of adding epic storytelling to a game, but in Onslaught’s case it hurts more than helps. The reason being, is that the story is completely setup through boring text. Not that reading shouldn’t be involved in a game, but the presentation of the text and lack of any visual stimulation really drags down the setup. I actually think the game would have fared better without a story at all.
It sounds like I’ve been harsh on the game so far. Once the gameplay starts, all the problems with the connection and story fizzle away. Onslaught is a very tight, and fun experience that has a great deal of polish for something you see on WiiWare.
The most important aspect of the game is the controls. The weapon aiming is spot-on, and feels very fluid. It rivals the aiming that was seen in Metroid Prime 3, which is definitely an impressive feat. The mapping of the weapons to the d-pad makes for seamless weapon changing. To reload, you snap your controller to the right which has worked spot-on so far. The motion controls that I’ve utilized so far have been great additions. If a cyborg insect jumps on and bites you, drumming the nunchuk and Wii remote slams it off you. Also, if bug slime gets on your suit, you swipe with the nunchuk to slide it off. The motion controls have been very responsive and have added to the experience instead of detracting it.
Playing through level 4, the game has a very even balance of difficulty. Right now, I’m playing on normal and Onslaught has provided enough of a challenge to keep me on my toes. So far there have been only three kinds of generic enemies, and a boss fight. Although the enemies are repetitive in design, the game sends a massive amount of them at you. You’ll have to maneuver around to stay alive, and you’re always blasting away. The boss fight was very entertaining and provided a decent challenge, and the bug had a massive scale that added great atmosphere.
The graphics of Onslaught are quite impressive for a WiiWare game. The textures aren’t anything that will blow you away, but are crisp enough not to hurt your eyes. The enemies are stylized well enough, and their animations are very fluid. The music, and sound department comes up a bit short though. The music that plays during the story filled parts of the game will put you to sleep. And the gameplay portions aren’t that much better. So far, the only voice acting I’ve heard has come from one line. It’s uttered repeatedly from a squad mate on your team, “That’s why you’re still a kid”. You’ll hear this enough to want to drill a hole in your brain. Like the story, I’m puzzled as to why they included this in the game.
Onslaught so far has been great, but at the same time has left me wanting more. I wish that Hudson would have invested more resources to make the game a retail release. With some higher production values given to the story, and expanding the multiplayer this game could have really been something. As it stands, I can easily recommend you drop down the 1,000 Wii points to play Onslaught. If the rest of the game is anything like the four levels, then I’m in for a treat. Just be prepared to be annoyed by some aspects of the game.