Game Reviews

Abyss Attack

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iOS
| Abyss Attack
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Abyss Attack
|
iOS
| Abyss Attack

Imagine a bullet-hell game with most of the bullets taken out and you've got a pretty decent idea of what Abyss Attack plays like. It's not as frantic as the likes of Sine Mora, nor as addictive, but its simple shooting and single-finger controls are pleasant enough.

Throw in some nice neon graphics and you're left with a game that's far from ground-breaking, and fumbles a little when it comes to a sense of progression, but which you won't mind spending a few minutes with every now and then.

Shoot the sea

Abyss Attack is an underwater shooter that throws you into a sub. You move by sliding a finger around the screen, and the game fires your weapons for you. You can equip a variety of weapons and boosts at the start of your run and activate them with a tap.

You're shooting neon-glowing blobs that twist and move around the screen in patterns. Weird sprigs of light reach at you from the sides of the walls of the trench you're flying down, and skittish little creatures float around in tightly packed shoals.

The extra weapons you can equip have a pretty long recharge, but there are also special bonus boxes that float down the screen towards you. These let you fire out streams of electric energy, or slow down time and pick off your foes with ease.

There are big boss battles as well that see you chipping away at the life bar of monstrously large creatures, weaving through their attacks and trying to knock them out before they take off the three chunks of life you have.

The problem is, it all feels a little formulaic, and the game isn't split into levels. You'll have to battle through the whole of the first section of the game over and over again as you try and get that little bit further and live that little big longer.

Not very deep

It makes for a frustrating and repetitive experience that's unlikely to elicit the concentration the very best shooters can. There's fun to be had, but it comes in small doses, and while there are missions to complete it's not the same as pushing on to see more of what the game has to offer.

Abyss Attack isn't terrible, then, but shooter fans will find it all a bit old-ashioned, and newcomers to the genre will probably find themselves a bit underwhelmed.

Abyss Attack

An occasionally interesting shooter, Abyss Attack is a little too flat to really recommend
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.