Space Intervention (Wii U)

If your game’s design is going to hew close to that of other successful video games, it’s important to understand why those games succeeded in first place. Space Intervention takes some pretty obvious cues from the design of Galaxian and to a lesser extent the game it’s clearly named in reference to, Space Invaders. However, what helps these classic arcade games stave off repetition and spice up the space alien shooting isn’t present in this game, the absence of some of those games’ key mechanics certainly felt.

Space Intervention throws you into battle against four rows of aliens, there being four unique alien species in their ranks and forty aliens to blast per round. The rows of aliens move back and forth at the top of the screen, but they never attempt to come down towards you nor do they ever speed up. In fact, no matter how deep into the game you get, their tactics will never adjust. One alien will fire at a time, and while some of them have shot types that will linger on screen longer so that sometimes you are dodging more than one shot at a time technically, they still feel only mildly threatening. There is at least some layer of strategy to these identical repeating rounds as you will probably want to prioritize taking out the more dangerous aliens first, and you can even leave a few weak ones alive so that when it does come time for a shot to be fired, there is a good chance it will come from a weak alien rather than one that might require you to dodge a bit more actively.

Space Intervention has 22 pink and yellow aliens making up the front two lines, these the least concerning creatures you have to worry about. When they fire their shot, it’s a single laser you shouldn’t have to worry much about, but just behind these simple foes are the ones that are the most dangerous. The nine purple aliens are more fearsome than even the two giant aliens in the back with their shot type covering the most space and doing so rather quickly. Lobbing three spheres down towards you, you often have to find the safe space between them quickly to ensure you don’t get hit. Your space ship at the bottom of the screen is limited to only left and right movement but it is up to the task of squeezing between the attack, although if you do get hit your ship doesn’t blow up. The Wii U GamePad represents your three hits before a game over as extra space ships but they act more like health since the action continues unimpeded when you’re hit, but if those lives do run out you’ll have to start over from the first round. Trying to get to a later round than last time won’t offer you new content but the base game is simple enough you can mindlessly aim for that goal, but the purple aliens are unfortunately unique in how dangerous they are. In fact, if you move your ship to the far left side of the screen, you are completely safe against every kind of attack except the purple alien that’s also farthest to the left. Kill it, settle into the left side, and you can walk away from the game while it’s still running and not have to worry about dying. With no enhancement to their strength or speed over time and with the aliens not allowed to leave their spot in the line-up, the threat level this enemy force poses is often fairly low and only made lower when you do the smart thing and try to take out the few aliens that might actually bother you.

Behind those nine purple aliens are the remaining two alien types. At the start and end of the row are large yellow and red ships that will fire the same lasers as the weak front lines but in the form of three quick shots all in a column. If you are underneath these big beasts then you might not react to the shot in time, but there’s little reason to be there since you can easily pick up on the game’s set shot rhythm and fire up to try and destroy the biggest enemies while someone weaker is wasting the army’s allocated shot. The green and yellow aliens between the red and yellow ships almost seem like they’d be something to worry about with their lightly homing red energy ball but it doesn’t chase you too closely. Drifting a little away from its current path will likely shake it, the only real problem being the fire rate does benefit them when they’re the only aliens left as the homing shots can make a wall you will have to slip through with a tiny bit of care. Again, it’s not to the level that it’s something you should struggle with, but this shot at least conceptually tries to force you to move away from it rather than finding and occupying an obvious safe zone like you can do with the normal laser shots.

Your own shots kill every alien they hit in one shot and your shot speed isn’t too bad. Unlike in Galaxian you don’t have to time your shots well though as you can keep firing them out without worrying about restrictions on how many can be on screen at once, meaning you can just weave back and forth firing without much concern over whether you hit or not. The only reason you wouldn’t want to keep holding down the fire button is because maybe you want to leave a few weaker aliens alive for that bit of rank thinning strategy mentioned earlier even though it’s not really required to get far. Once you learn what little there is to understand in the game, your success is probably going to be tied more to your attention span as you need to pay a bit of attention to dodge the purple alien shots when they do occasionally threaten your progress. Space Intervention’s greatest sin is its dull simplicity though, meaning you can boot it up and blast some aliens with ease without being too bothered by anything actively annoying. It will hardly be fulfilling though, the process far too easy and basic to make trying to get into deeper rounds and earn high scores worth even the minimal time investment that might take.

THE VERDICT: Space Intervention expects you to be content shooting down the same arrangement of aliens ad infinitum and yet it does little to try and make them actually challenging to take out. The purple aliens at least demand a little more attention then most, but it’s also quite easy to just blast any aliens you’re worried about and sweep away the rest afterward. There is very little pressure to make the gameplay exciting and with the aliens never varying up their tactics success is more about not losing focus as you are made to repeat the same actions again and again, Space Intervention far too mindless despite its harmless easiness.

And so, I give Space Intervention for Wii U…

A BAD rating. The purple aliens having a shot that might actually force you to be a touch alert while playing saves this from being far emptier in what it offers, but it’s not so much a game changer as it is a small shred of what the game should be attempting to do with all of its aliens. The homing shots aren’t aggressive enough and the aliens being stuck in a constant drift left and right pattern without ever evolving their tactics means you never are incentivized to break from the safest tactics. Those tactics aren’t even too far from the common sense approach of just firing away and not throwing yourself into the path of lasers, and it’s so easy to point out how to improve the game it almost doesn’t feel worth the effort. Have the aliens move in closer over time, either by coming down to attack or progressing down gradually like in Space Invaders. Have the aliens get more aggressive in later stages with more frequent attacks or have them get bolder when they are fewer in number.

Old arcade games achieved their lasting appeal not just by lining up aliens for the sake of being shot down. They had some extra level of pressure put on you beyond the most basic attacks the foes are capable of, adding things to consider because killing the right foes can change how a round feels and how difficult it is to overcome. Space Intervention only has that on the most basic level with prioritizing the stronger ships and it’s not like leaving them around makes the round feel appreciably harder since the same limits on enemy shot timing are always in place. Space Intervention didn’t need to even alter its design that much to start approach acceptable levels of fun, but it seems like there was barely any thought put into the game at all. What little appeal there is in easily blasting aliens saves it from greater scorn, but there’s really no reason to play it when games from forty years ago were already doing its design ideas better.