Indie Gradius: Counterattack

I end up in this situation, pretty often, where I pick up an indie game and I want to write my review like... 15 minutes into playing it. I'm not saying AAA games have more depth, but they tend to ease you into things, whereas games like this you just don't feel like finishing because bam you feel like you already know everything about it.

Counterattack is, before I mention anything else, an early access title. I have no idea what is missing from the game, although the news does mention they plan to revamp the UI. Which is good, because the UI is simply awful, but if they admit they need to work on it I'm not holding it against them.

As for the game itself; it's a side-scrolling space shooter. The storyline is simple: mankind something something, many robots, blah blah, super science space fighter shoot planes, pew pew, off we go to the lasers. The game is a bit lacking in some categories and robust in others.



What's good? Well, it has a good assortment of ships, parts you can install on those ships and power-ups you pick up on the fly. It uses the old timey gradius system, where each power up advances your bar and then you spend it on the power up you desire. The parts and attachments allow you to change up what your loadout is, although the selection isn't as smooth as you'd like and switching can be a little annoying. That might get fixed when they fix the UI up, but I kind of doubt it.

It also says certain combinations unlock new abilities. The only "new" ability I managed unlocked a ship unable to fire. Yay. That's pretty exciting. Other than that, it gives the game a mild rogue-like feeling, but some of the abilities are a little oddly worded.

The music is also catchy, but that might be really subjective. It's sort of cheap sounding trance/techno, but I really enjoy it, so maybe you will too. Actually the audio direction in general works fairly well for me.

The bad is... Just about everything else. The game is relatively responsive, but the visuals are muddy and the game is kind of repetitive. There's not really enough enemy unit types, and the enemies you do see, you see a ton of. It's kind of neat seeing hundreds of enemy ships exploding on and on, but it starts to feel a bit bland. The level design is more about enemy formation than firing patterns or otherwise, which tends to box you in and be really frustrating. There were a couple spots while playing it with X character with Y loadout where I legitimately wondered if it was actually possible to do certain sections without dying. Then you do it with a different character and you just obliterate it.

Also the weapons could use some explaining. It took me a while to figure out what a 'Beam' upgrade does - it fires a big laser after you stop firing your main gun, which is pretty 'eh' - and I'm still not sure what a meson is or if it works with the gauss.

The issue I start to have with the game is for all the simplicity of the graphical work, hit boxes and enemy fire start to blur into the explosions and as the difficulty increases it just starts to feel claustrophobic and difficult to follow. Also the palette is simply not as varied as it should be. I'm not great shmups as my eye-sight isn't fantastic but even as such I often feel like whatever killed me just faded into the background or I was meant to dodge around incoming fire that is hard to sort out. The visuals are just sort of "soft" and it takes away from the experience.

As an early access title I probably got in some $1 to $4 bundle, I'm not complaining, I had a bit of fun. The game needs another layer of polish, and the dialogue/writing is pretty sad, but the basic shooting is a good hour or two of enjoyment. I like the attachments system but the stuff I unlocked didn't generally change the gameplay much, which was a little disappointing.

I wouldn't quite say this game is a pass but I wouldn't really recommend it either.