Poor effort indeed
For a delightfully offbeat take on the classic shooter formula, Earth Invasion is almost worth checking out, simply for its slightly unusual approach to the standard alien invasion premise. The gameplay itself however lacks the inventiveness of its story and is unfortunately pretty dire, meaning that all the effort that went on the background is wasted. In a neat reversal of the usual shooter storylines, Earth is under attack but this time, the player is part of the attacking force. However, to take things even further, you don't take the role of the avenging hero so typical of the genre, but instead are in control of the aliens' worst fighter who has been thrust into the limelight as a punishment for years of incompetence. It's your job to head to Earth as the lone spearhead and open up the way for the main invasion and it's here that the game heads into more familiar territory. There are ten missions on display here (five in the shareware version) and your task is simply to wade through five waves of oncoming enemies of varying types, including a capital ship which must be destroyed in order to clean out the system. To make matters more challenging, your allies refuse to repair your craft after each encounter so any defects are carried over into the next level. You can occasionally grab hold of shield upgrades in the field though, so not everything is against you. Once you get past Earth Invasion's admittedly catchy background, you're left with a fairly tedious shooter that is slow and almost entirely lacking in thrills. It's equally uninteresting in terms of visuals and sound and any interest stimulated by the story is likely to be lost about three seconds after you start playing. For a much better take on the side scrolling shooter, check out Uridium or Defender, a pair of true classics.
