Space Invaders: Invasion Day for the Playstation 2
They came from outer space… again. The Space Invaders have returned once more to cause more carnage, but this time it’s different because, unlike either the arcade original and Taito’s own re-workings or even Activision’s attempt to revisit the franchise on the original Playstation, Space Invaders: Invasion Day (referred to as Space Raiders in the NTSC territories) doesn’t deal with the aliens trudging towards the player and instead picks up the story after the outer defences fail and the cities have been overrun by slimy creatures.
The opening movie is more like a science fiction blockbuster, this is Space Invaders does Independence Day with just a dash of Starship Troopers to taste; after the lavish (and pretty long-winded at five minutes) cinematics introducing the protagonists and explaining some of their angst-ridden back stories (boyfriends missing, friends and colleagues slaughtered, you get the gist) it’s time to start whooping E.T.’s ass. But before diving into battle, the player is given the option to select if they want to take on the invaders as Justin (the last remaining member of a teenage gang, sporting a rather fetching jacket with a top row Invader on the back), Ashley (a photographer searching for her boyfriend Roy) and Naji (the only survivor of a S.W.A.T. team’s doomed last stand against the invaders).
Justin had decided that the council's campaign to keep the city tidy really wasn't working...
The view of the action is third person with the camera usually being placed somewhere above the player to give a clearer view of the action and, since this is something of an adopted son to the Space Invaders family, our heroes can only move left or right and always fire in the same direction, forwards into the fray. Each character has different abilities (although actually noticing those differences takes a little effort) so Naji moves slowly but gets the heaviest artillery, Ashley is more nippy but armed only with a couple of Lara Croft-style handguns and Justin is the all-rounder – each character can also carry grenades and a very limited stock of their own unique special weapon, although where the average street punk or photographer gets one of those from is never adequately explained…
One point of note is that, although power-up weapons and smart bombs have a finite amount of ammunition, the characters never run out for the weapons they start with; the level of pseudo realism in games that means I can’t just keep hammering the fire button like a wazzock has always been something of a bugbear, so Space Invaders: Invasion Day wins at least two brownie points from yours truly for that even if it loses one for the ridiculous score multiplier – if there is a single player out there who can play this thing well without hammering the fire button I want to know their email address so that I can tell them what a bloody show-off they are! The game itself offers two modes of play, story and survival; in story mode events unfold in cut scenes between single player fights, leading to a surprise I won’t spoil at the start of the final boss battle. Survival mode is far more carnal, pitting one or two humans against the nasties with all guns blazing and no continues… this is a bit more like the Space Invaders of old, although there are still the loads between waves and those drawn out boss battles to deal with.
It turned out that Roy was a figment of Ashley's imagination!
Despite my liking Space Invaders as a game, looking back at the original with the kind of hindsight that intervening thirty years gives, one of the biggest issues now (as opposed to then when we simply didn’t care) is probably the repetition; essentially, the player chips away at a group of aliens one at a time until they’re all destroyed before moving on to next wave – the scene even remains the same during each level (although the camera angle does at least change between waves) until the boss destroys at least a part of it. That “rinse and repeat” mentality isn’t an issue if you’re dealing with a coin-operated game where goes should only last a finite amount of time, but that repetitive nature still holds true for Space Invaders: Invasion Day and even a single campaign in story mode is a drawn out affair. I’d have to say that the survival mode is what retains at least some of the “dip in and shoot stuff” fun of the Space Invaders franchise and the chances are that any long-term enjoyment will come from there rather than repeatedly bludgeoning through the story – if you see a copy going for a couple of quid like I did then Space Invaders: Invasion Day might be worth having, otherwise there are better options for both third person shooters and Space Invaders available.
The version of Space Invaders: Invasion Day giving as good as it got was for the Playstation 2 – players can also take a pummelling from the Gamecube version.
