Aniquilation Review

Sometimes it’s refreshing to jump back into some “old-school” games in the form of a twin-stick shooter, unfortunately however, this isn’t a game I want to spend too much time in.

Story

There’s a story here somewhere, if you care to find it? Something, something aliens, something something planets, I’m not all too sure.  You’re dropped into different planets and left to clear out buildings, enemies and bosses. Maybe they’re trying to take over, who knows? I don’t.

It’s got some chesty space chicks throughout the story so, there’s that? Pair it with the fact the game seems to want to constantly, and I mean constantly vibrate your controller whether you’re paused, playing or on the main menu and you might just be in for a good time. 

Gameplay

Aniquilation is your usual twin-stick shooter type gameplay, with a spaceship that’s got a sword to deflect enemies at a close range and turn those enemies into “the weapon.” You can fling enemies towards objectives with the close range sword and it stops them getting any damage on you, so once you realise you’ll be getting hit non-stop you will spend the whole time tapping that RB button.

There’s also a shield on your ship, but once you start getting a large crowd of enemies it becomes kind of useless, especially once you throw in the environmental effects that damage you too, causing you to spank that RB button repeatedly.

At certain parts at the end of, or in between levels, the game throw in a on the rails linear section to gather “IQ Metal”. This IQ Metal goes towards using an ability within the actual main levels of the game, but if i’m being totally honest, I’m not quite sure what the ability does in terms of effect, so these sections feel a total waste and are extremely boring and bland.

In Aniquilation, some levels want you to survive 5 waves of enemies,  you may have to destroy a certain amount of buildings,  and others levels, you fight a boss, that’s all the variation you’ll be getting here which isn’t saying an awful lot.

You can also heal yourself (or your ship) by finding these green orb/plate things that you just have to hover by to recover. So some missions you can essentially just sit under these keeping healed and continuing on with the objective. Once you’ve got the controls down, this doesn’t take that long to do at all.

Co-Op/Multiplayer

Aniquilation also features a co-operative mode available  and a multiplayer mode, neither of which I’ve tried for myself as I don’t have a player two, but I imagine if the game is a little dull, add another controller, isn’t going to add very much. Should you choose to play through Aniquilation with another soul, then I’d think you’d be able to smash through it in the space of an evening.

Co-Op mode will presumably take you through the main story with a friend, whilst the multiplayer mode will pit you against each other.

There’s 4 multiplayer modes to choose from:

• Free-For-All, which is just your bog standard missions, pitted against your player 2.

• Goal Attack, where you have to punt a football around the planet in a 1v1 match with all the usual enemies/environmental effects in play.

• Contagion, where you’re “infected” and you have to try and pass on this infection to the other player.

• Base Defense, where you have to defend your 3 bases from attack from the other player.

These will know doubt add a little more spice to the game for sure, and maybe offer a new fun way to play. However, due to the lack of a second player available to me at the time of playing i didn’t get to experience it first hand. I’m sure adding these modes mentioned above can only add to the replay-ability of Aniquilation.

Verdict

There honestly isn’t a lot more to say about Aniquilation, I’ve pretty much covered everything that the game offers. Aside from that the game doesn’t look as impressive visually  as you’d expect it to, for one launching in 2022 on current-gen consoles.

For me, the game is far too repetitive, and it doesn’t help that you don’t even know what’s going on or even why you’re destroying things and dropping into different worlds.

Available on the Xbox Store for £13.74, I’d personally give it a miss unless you’re a massive twin-stick and co-op fan, itching for something you and a buddy can play together on the couch. To sum it up in one line – There’s better twin-stick shooters out there.