Gaiabreaker (Wii U eShop) Review

For there to be a winner there must be a loser and unfortunately I think I have found just that thing, a loser fails on so many points that one wonders how it ever made it pasts certification.  What we have here is the deep dark side of the digital only eShop, without a physical box for Nintendo to put a “Seal of Approval” on this – they are in the clear as far as promising a decent product and oh boy is this a doozy! Now before we get emails about that, it was a joke!

This is a top down scrolling shooter in the same vein as Ikaruga or the Raiden Series in the arcades but missing the quality that made those titles so desirable and somewhat more tangible. You pilot your ship across a scrolling vista while waves of enemies fire an assortment of blobs and shapes at you to attempt destroy you through the sheer volume rather than any intrinsic complexity. That is not a bad point, this is how all shmup games work – simply looking at titles like Radiant cherry blossom if you want to see this at it’s most extreme and awesome.

The problem is that the gameplay is slow and clumsy, the controls are sluggish and lack any sense of urgency, as such this is where all the difficulty comes from as you never get a fair chance to pilot your ship with any great accuracy. If it wasn’t for this fact alone I would probably be a little more kind to this. I was harsh on the 3D Moto racer series on the 3DS but they at least felt like they where a little weak simply due to a lack of refinement. The problem here is that it goes much deeper, the roots of generic evil touch every element of this release and to some degree it is broken in at almost every level from a usability and design point of view.

Despite this you have to fight your way across six levels to face off against wave after wave of computed aesthetic using you normal shots and a “special” homing shots to defeat the enemies. Only once you get to the end of the game do you realise that there is so little depth to this title that your are hoping your Wii U will die from a power serge so that you are not forced to endure this experience again.

Enemy designs are trivial and unsurprising both in terms of visuals and the flight patterns used. There is absolutely no class to this game, it is entirely by the numbers and executed extremely poorly. This would be considered a cheap knock off on the iOS/Android store yet alone the more classy eShop. With it’s below average 3D model work this would be right at home on a 3DO or Atari Jaguar! There is nothing new added to the genre in any fashion.

And that is the problem, this would be considered a fairly poor effort 20 years ago on some of the worst gaming hardware to hit the mainstream consciousness. The graphics all look alike and the kind of work on show isn’t terrible but I have seen better from beginner 3D classes, now I will admit my 3D work is not that great but I’m sure it just might be better than what is on show here. The audio is forgettable, I suppose that’s a good point as it isn’t annoying in any meaning full fashion. A fitting match would be anything by Yoko Ono in the last few years, if you are going to be assaulted by the sense you might as well complete the experience to get the full warmth and charm of a Gestapo interrogation that can come from a title of this calibre.

With all of this comes the most puzzling facet of this title, the frame rate. Technology should not hold back the game to the extent that it is almost unplayable but that is the modern day miracle on show here. It is ok while there is no action going on and it is merely scrolling and a single background image and the players ship, but once more than three enemies with a few bullets moving around turn up to ruin the fun it turns into a slide show. Let me restate that, the Wii U – the machine with a TRIPLE CORE CPU! and a fairly decent GPU can barely keep about 15-20 sprites on screen running at double digit frame rates. Power Shot on the Sega Master System can do better than that system is at least 10000x slower than Wii U.

This is a title that would be considered bearable on an online web based game site… and I’m almost positive that is exactly what this is. Uninspired gameplay – check. Simplistic design – check. No real concept of decent performance on Wii U – check. It is a shame that this is one of the first “fruits” of Nintendo’s push for HTML5/Java games to be used on the eShop, it explains all these issues but they should have been worked around long before they ever made it to release. Developers have to work with the limitations of the software and hardware that are presented to them rather than admitting defeat and blowing ahead at the cost of the end users experiences.

Normally I would try and at least give you some highlights to a game like this, to find the little bit of good in the bad but I am struggling here. So here I go, playing this for the first 10 minutes does make Galaxian a 35 years old game feel fresh and original again, at least it has that going for it.

This is a game that is broken at all levels and should be avoided at all costs. I can guarantee that anything else on the eShop is a better purchase and that includes the Louvre guided tour on 3DS of which I have heard is actually really awesome when you are actually at the location.