When I was first made aware of Ion Assault by one of its PR reps, I challenged him to justify the game’s existence; we have nearly as many dual-stick shooters as tower defense games and the genre is already quite full. His answer was simple, "the particle system." At first I thought he meant graphical particles, and it was only later I realized he was referring to a system that basically changes how this genre can be played. While the basic twin-stick shooter premise of an overhead view as you move through a square level blasting enemies in all directions is here, Ion Assault adds some very interesting twists.
Your primary goal in Ion Assault is to clear each stage of obstacles, usually asteroids of various sizes. Enemies will show up too, but with the exception of boss battles you don’t specifically need to kill them; in theory it’s fine to just dodge them and deal with the obstacles. But unlike most games in this genre, your ship isn’t gifted with rapid-fire weaponry that can rain a barrage of death all around you. Instead, you have to draw energy particles into your ship; these particles are all over the map, and the more you draw in, the more powerful your resulting attack is. But stronger shots send the particles further away, so you’ll have to chase them down and re-gather them afterward, risking an attack in the meantime. Ion Assault thus is not about firing wildly, instead it rewards careful thought, accuracy, and good dodging.
The single-player mode and local co-op campaign take you through four sectors, each composed of four normal stages plus a boss fight. You move with the left analog stick, but turn with the right. I do not mean you fire with the right stick, I mean you turn; firing is done by holding the left trigger to draw in particles, then you let go of it when you have enough for a suitably large shot. The right trigger is used to activate power ups (which can range from things like a vortex bomb that sucks up all nearby enemies, obstacles, and particles to a set of remote drones that fly around to help you), and the bumpers cycle through power-ups you’ve collected. This makes the controls rather easy to learn, and the best comparison I can make is an obscure one; it’s like flying the Supox Blade from Star Control 2, only able to turn while it ’strafes.’
While the controls are easy, they offer a decent amount of depth. You move with surprising agility when not drawing in particles, enough so to ’circle strafe’ your targets in some cases. On the other hand, drawing in particles slows you down but also lets you use those particles as a shield or battering ram until you’re ready to fire, though it doesn’t work against all enemies. Still, these trade-offs combined with the interesting power-ups will keep you on your toes, and that’s well enough. This is especially the case in boss battles, where you’ll face very large enemies that have to be taken out a part at a time. This involves a fair amount of pattern recognition and finding weak spots on the giant boss, so it makes for a nice change of pace from regular stages.
As far as special features go, Ion Assault has a few worth noting. One is a dynamic difficulty system; if you’re rapidly plowing through enemies and obstacles, stages will spawn more enemies to keep you entertained and give you even more points (which in turn encourages a ’score attack’ method of play), otherwise it eases off if you’re going slowly. There are also some multiplayer modes, including local co-op with another player (you can’t shoot one another, but you can bump into your friend) and a fairly straight-forward versus mode. The versus mode offers online play, but I have been unable to test it; I was unable to find a session to join, or any players to join me, in two hours of trying over two days at wildly different times throughout the day. This suggests the online play is somewhat abandoned already, which is a shame.
Ultimately, the particle system redeems this game. Ion Assault’s premise of being a twin-stick shooter in a square space stage is nothing new, but using the level itself as both your defense and your means of attack is pretty interesting and enjoyable. On the other hand, multiplayer may not last you very long and the singleplayer campaign won’t either; each sector only lasts about thirty minutes, and you only get four of them. Thus, I love the game but lament its low content and am thus left in the position of recommending it for purchase, but only if you have picked up all the other top-notch 800 point titles in the XBLA catalog already. It’s a lot of fun, but you just don’t get more than a few hours of content for your $10 and if you’re on a budget, that can be an issue. Otherwise, this is worth picking up.
