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WiiWare Review: Onslaught
Is WiiWare's first FPS worth your $10?
February 17, 2009 | 5:24 AM PSTby: Andrew Camilleri
Develop: Hundson Soft
Genre: FPS
Players: 1
Release Date: 02/13/2009 [PAL territories].
Hudson's WiiWare FPS was a complete surprise to most. Out of the blue we were given screenshots, some little information on it and BAM it was released straight away. Only now after Onslaught's release are we seeing the first official trailer and impressions. I didn't wait for any reviews; I liked the idea, appreciated that someone was offering something different on WiiWare and instantly downloaded it. Am I impressed?
The concept of Onslaught is simple: you are a space marine [no way!] and your job is to destroy all alien bugs on this specific alien planet [originality at its best!]. Hudson could have tried to give us a better story line, or, at least, something different from your usual fair. We have done this so many times that it is officially tiring and boring. To make matters worse missions are limited to going from point A to point B or protecting point C etcetera, etcetera.
Story aside, Onslaught is a pretty fun game fortunately. The controls are excellent. I was quite worried that Hudson didn't take their time to refine their controls quite well. Fortunately they did and Onslaught is one of the better controlling FPSs on Wii. Its aiming is nowhere near the precision and fluidity of Metroid Prime 3 or Medal of Honor Heroes 2. If any of you bought Moon DS, recently reviewed on Kombo, might get an idea of what the aiming feels like –- fluid and just enough. You reload by shaking the remote and don't worry, it won't make you flail your arm around just to reload; a basic thrust towards any direction is all it takes. Hudson made sure the sensitivity is perfectly adjusted and it is. One has the option to adjust sensitivity (turning speed) from the options menu. It is not fully customizable in that you have 4 options ranging from A to D, A being the highest sensitivity available.
In Onslaught you get the standard set of weapons: a rocket launcher, a machine gun, a shotgun and a rifle automatically mapped to each direction on the D-Pad while shooting is handled with the obvious B trigger. Apart from that you also get a whip and grenades assigned to the Z and C button on the nunchuck respectively; the only difference being that to use or launch the whip of grenade one has to first press the Z/C button then do a swiping motion with the nunchuck use. The motion controls do not end here though. When shooting an alien bug from point blank range green blood gets splattered onto your HUD and to wipe it off (it's poisonous) you have to do a wiping gesture with the nunchuck as well. You cannot shoot and wipe the blood off of you at the same time though –- a shame really since this is the only thing I found uncomfortable with the controls.
Nintendo put a 40MB limit to WiiWare games, something which shows in respect to the game's graphical engine. Don't get me wrong, it is one of the better looking WiiWare games yet plus it is pushing some very clever effects like bloom lighting, normal mapping and even some impressive particle effects. Strictly speaking it is a true marvel how Hudson managed to cram Onslaught into a 40MB file! Still though the limits show quite well when looking at the visuals from an artistic point of view. No other word can describe it better than: bland. The environments are you standard fare of brown muddy cliffs and caverns. The aliens are generic bugs like worms and spiders blown to gigantic proportions while you, the player, are a grey space marine. To tell you the truth the humans' armor in Onslaught resemble a lot the Hellghast's armor of the Killzone franchise although more comic. To compare it, technically, to another video game I can safely say that the environments look as good as those found in TimeSplitters 3: Future Perfect from the GameCube while the guns and enemies looks somewhat better because of the mapping used. Artistically TS trounces it completely; Onslaught has no style, unfortunately.
One of Onslaught's biggest strengths is its online co-op mode. One can link to anyone worldwide, regional or with friends after exchanging friendcodes. I never expected the experience to be so fluid and lag-free. Once you connect to 2 or more players (4 maximum) each of you gets to choose what level you want to play from the Story mode, and the game chooses randomly afterwards which one. It is pretty simple and it is a shame that a WiiWare game is the first to offer Wii owners online co-op. Better late than never I guess. Might I add that in Story mode you are never alone; almost all of the time, apart from the first level, you are joined with 2 other space marines to fight with you. There are three modes of formation easily chosen with the 2 button on the Wii remote: frontal, sideways or back attack. The difference is in frontal the marines will shoot in the same direction you are, in sideways they will shoot the aliens coming from the side and backwards from the back.
As a first Onslaught gives Wii owners a taste of what can be done through WiiWare. I suspect that because of the 40MB limit Hudson had to omit any local multiplayer which is quite a shame to be honest. It would have made the game a lot more fun. Here's to hoping that when the SD storage update is released Nintendo will increase the limit and give developers a bit more space to work with.
I award Onslaught a 3/5 - Good but could have been better. For $10 I recommend it to those who want a quick online co-op FPS fix on their Wii.
NB: At the time of writing, Onslaught has only been released in PAL territories. No specific dates have been announced for the rest of the world.
Genre: FPS
Players: 1
Release Date: 02/13/2009 [PAL territories].
Hudson's WiiWare FPS was a complete surprise to most. Out of the blue we were given screenshots, some little information on it and BAM it was released straight away. Only now after Onslaught's release are we seeing the first official trailer and impressions. I didn't wait for any reviews; I liked the idea, appreciated that someone was offering something different on WiiWare and instantly downloaded it. Am I impressed?
The concept of Onslaught is simple: you are a space marine [no way!] and your job is to destroy all alien bugs on this specific alien planet [originality at its best!]. Hudson could have tried to give us a better story line, or, at least, something different from your usual fair. We have done this so many times that it is officially tiring and boring. To make matters worse missions are limited to going from point A to point B or protecting point C etcetera, etcetera.
Story aside, Onslaught is a pretty fun game fortunately. The controls are excellent. I was quite worried that Hudson didn't take their time to refine their controls quite well. Fortunately they did and Onslaught is one of the better controlling FPSs on Wii. Its aiming is nowhere near the precision and fluidity of Metroid Prime 3 or Medal of Honor Heroes 2. If any of you bought Moon DS, recently reviewed on Kombo, might get an idea of what the aiming feels like –- fluid and just enough. You reload by shaking the remote and don't worry, it won't make you flail your arm around just to reload; a basic thrust towards any direction is all it takes. Hudson made sure the sensitivity is perfectly adjusted and it is. One has the option to adjust sensitivity (turning speed) from the options menu. It is not fully customizable in that you have 4 options ranging from A to D, A being the highest sensitivity available.
In Onslaught you get the standard set of weapons: a rocket launcher, a machine gun, a shotgun and a rifle automatically mapped to each direction on the D-Pad while shooting is handled with the obvious B trigger. Apart from that you also get a whip and grenades assigned to the Z and C button on the nunchuck respectively; the only difference being that to use or launch the whip of grenade one has to first press the Z/C button then do a swiping motion with the nunchuck use. The motion controls do not end here though. When shooting an alien bug from point blank range green blood gets splattered onto your HUD and to wipe it off (it's poisonous) you have to do a wiping gesture with the nunchuck as well. You cannot shoot and wipe the blood off of you at the same time though –- a shame really since this is the only thing I found uncomfortable with the controls.
Nintendo put a 40MB limit to WiiWare games, something which shows in respect to the game's graphical engine. Don't get me wrong, it is one of the better looking WiiWare games yet plus it is pushing some very clever effects like bloom lighting, normal mapping and even some impressive particle effects. Strictly speaking it is a true marvel how Hudson managed to cram Onslaught into a 40MB file! Still though the limits show quite well when looking at the visuals from an artistic point of view. No other word can describe it better than: bland. The environments are you standard fare of brown muddy cliffs and caverns. The aliens are generic bugs like worms and spiders blown to gigantic proportions while you, the player, are a grey space marine. To tell you the truth the humans' armor in Onslaught resemble a lot the Hellghast's armor of the Killzone franchise although more comic. To compare it, technically, to another video game I can safely say that the environments look as good as those found in TimeSplitters 3: Future Perfect from the GameCube while the guns and enemies looks somewhat better because of the mapping used. Artistically TS trounces it completely; Onslaught has no style, unfortunately.
One of Onslaught's biggest strengths is its online co-op mode. One can link to anyone worldwide, regional or with friends after exchanging friendcodes. I never expected the experience to be so fluid and lag-free. Once you connect to 2 or more players (4 maximum) each of you gets to choose what level you want to play from the Story mode, and the game chooses randomly afterwards which one. It is pretty simple and it is a shame that a WiiWare game is the first to offer Wii owners online co-op. Better late than never I guess. Might I add that in Story mode you are never alone; almost all of the time, apart from the first level, you are joined with 2 other space marines to fight with you. There are three modes of formation easily chosen with the 2 button on the Wii remote: frontal, sideways or back attack. The difference is in frontal the marines will shoot in the same direction you are, in sideways they will shoot the aliens coming from the side and backwards from the back.
As a first Onslaught gives Wii owners a taste of what can be done through WiiWare. I suspect that because of the 40MB limit Hudson had to omit any local multiplayer which is quite a shame to be honest. It would have made the game a lot more fun. Here's to hoping that when the SD storage update is released Nintendo will increase the limit and give developers a bit more space to work with.
I award Onslaught a 3/5 - Good but could have been better. For $10 I recommend it to those who want a quick online co-op FPS fix on their Wii.
NB: At the time of writing, Onslaught has only been released in PAL territories. No specific dates have been announced for the rest of the world.
November 20, 2009
