Invasions Turns Your Living Room Into The Setting For A Space Battle
Invasions ($0.99) by 7 Raven Studios is a shoot ‘em up game where you must fight off an onslaught of alien forces. Use augmented reality to seek out and destroy creatures from outer space and the UFOs that brought them here.
The goal of the game is to shoot, shoot, shoot until you can’t anymore. There are no levels to beat or missions to complete. Just shoot as many aliens as possible in your surrounding area.
To find enemies, players physically move their device around in a circle. The game can be played with the back-facing camera on, or off. If it is on, players will see aliens and UFOs right in front of them. If the camera function is off, a random background loads instead.
You don’t have to use augmented reality to play this game. Players can turn off the camera and the gyroscope functions in the control menu. If the gyroscope is off, the game controls switch to tilt.
The tilt controls are not very smooth. It is nearly impossible to line up a good shot. The best way to kill the enemy when using tilt controls is to just move in a circle continuously and hope your bullets hit something.
Players can only move in a circular motion. There is no up or down. All enemies come at you from the same level and, no matter how you tilt or angle your device they will remain in the center of the screen.
There are two different weapon types and a special nuclear attack that kills everything within range. Players can increase their health by shooting at floating hearts and get energy power ups the same way.
I first played this game on my iPad and immediately regretted it. The gameplay is choppy and awkward on the heavier device. The developers recommend using an iPhone 4/4S or a fourth generation iPod touch, so I switched to a smaller device. The gameplay was remarkably better. I highly recommend using an iPhone or iPod touch instead of an iPad to play this game.
This game is fun, but it lacks complexity. There are three levels of difficulty, but the only difference between them is more enemies. It doesn’t take long before it becomes redundant. It is only $0.99, and an entertaining way to pass the time while sitting in the dentist’s waiting room, but the replay value is fairly low because there are no new challenges. If you only have an iPad, I’d skip this one altogether.
