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Assaulter: War On Terror
If you have ever played one of the Metal Slug games before then Assaulter will seem very familiar. The game follows the frantic side scrolling shooter action example of the Metal Slug games very closely and offers you the chance to play as one of three different soldiers who are waging a war on terror. At your disposal is a sniper, scout and grenadier but standing between you and victory is an army of evil terrorists. I was very impressed when I saw screenshots of Assaulter on the store page but it also raised some concerns about the controls. Games of this type are notorious for requiring extreme finger dexterity and responsive controls in order to dodge the hordes of incoming bullets and grenades. This game approached this problem by eliminating the need to fire your weapon altogether. Instead, your character is constantly shooting at whatever enemy is in sight, freeing up your fingers to do the manoeuvring. There is a definite learning curve to this and initially it can feel like you are not really in control of the action. The controls also feel very inaccurate with my character frequently jumping when I wanted him to slide or walking straight into the path of oncoming bullets when I wanted him to jump. Fortunately, you have a generous health bar as well as armour to prevent you from dying too quickly. Visually Assaulter looks like something that should be housed in an Arcade cabinet and not a handheld device. Backgrounds and enemies are detailed and there are rarely any quiet moments. The screen is filled with explosions at all time and enemies come at you from all sides. Even amidst all this chaos, I did not experience any slowdown. The action takes place from a tradition 2D side view as you make your way from left to right killing anything that moves. The only complaint I have is that due to the rather awkward control method my fingers were obscuring large areas of the screen while I was moving my character. Some levels see your character in control of a vehicle like a motorbike but the controls remain the same. Waiting for you at the end of each level is usually some sort of boss character like a helicopter or big baddie but most stages can be finished in one to two minutes. With a total of ten levels, each with 3 sub stages this is a game you will not finish in a hurry. In between levels you are given a break where you can visit the shop to purchase new weapons or armour, sell any loot you may have acquired or upgrade your arsenal. In the free version of the game cash is rather hard to come buy since you can buy in-game cash with real world currency. This means that to get the best guns and armour you either have to replay levels in order to build up cash or fork over some real money to save time. It does not matter whether you are playing the free or paid version of the game however as you will be replaying levels a lot in any case. Your character earns experience for kills and certain weapons and armour can only be equipped if you meet the experience level requirements. The same goes for new levels that are unlocked. I found myself in plenty of situations where I was two levels below what was required of me to access a new stage and had to go back to previous stages to build up some more experience before I could progress. This can become rather tedious and is an artificial way to pad out the game. Your enjoyment of Assaulter will depend largely on how much you like the genre and how willing you are to put up with repetition. The visuals and audio is very nice with the gun sounds in particular sounding great but seeing and hearing the same things over and over causes it to become a bore. Add to that some badly translated English and controls that never quite feel right and you might be better off checking out the free version before deciding whether it is worth it to fork over some cash. The game was fun for a day or two and I still find myself going back to it occasionally but it is not as great as I had hoped it would be. |
TAGS: Assaulter, Scout, Sniper, Grenadier, War On Terror
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