0 day Attack on Earth (XBOX 360 - XB1/Series X Compatible)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Joined: Sat Oct 11, 2008 4:23 am
Location: Autobot City, Sugiura Base

0 day Attack on Earth (XBOX 360 - XB1/Series X Compatible)

Post by Sturmvogel Prime »

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Have you played trash shmups, Yashy? Well, you don't know what being a masochist is.

During Selma's ending in Sisters Royale, Yashin explains he married her because he is very masochist. ¿What does this have to do with the following shmup review?
I think he has NO IDEA of what is REALLY being a masochist. The best example is right here. Your trusty shmup reviewer from "Sugiura Base", Sturmvogel Prime. ¿WHY? The simple idea of buying trash shooters knowing they suck and play them without hesitation, THAT is real masochism. I'm sure if "Yashikins" played some of the trash games I've played all this time he would be requesting to be either euthanized, thrown out of an airlock into space or both. But at least I take an advantage of that Trash shmup masochism to write reviews about them and post them here so you don't have to play them and save your hard earned cash. Under that term, you can call me a "Reviewer of Grit" for playing all these bad shmups for you.



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Urban Strike H.G. Wells Edition.

Here I am starting the 2021 with more shooting. Unfortunately, the first review of the year is one of those "Trash Shooters": 0 day Attack on Earth.
In the main campaign you can select which mission you want to start (if you've cleared them) along with which ship you want to use for your gameplay, Unlike Ace Combat or the CS Mode of Dariusburst CS: Chronicle Saviours, you can't change your ship between missions. But before talking about the gameplay, let's make a quick rundown of the ships available to play.



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Here's a NERV vehicle that didn't made the grade.

FIGHTER-A: This blade-less helicopter like aircraft is the Linear Shot-type with a standard full frontal fire backed up with missile support increasing its width.



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Rapid and agile, the requirements needed on an Anti-Alien aircraft are met in this vehicle.

HELICOPTER-A: This Hind-like helicopter is the flamethrower type, as it utilizes a mid-ranged flamethrower on both frontal and back directions.



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Vintage design for those who want to fight with style.

RECIPROCATING-A: Heavily based on the japanese Shinden plane, this is the Spread Shot type ship as it utilizes a 5 Way Shot as its main weapon.



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Phat Harrier in 'da Hood.

X-A: Resembling a strange mix of the Harrier and F-4 Phantom II, this ship utilizes an explosive "Super Shell" like shot that causes reasonable damages and passes through enemies, becoming the "Power Type" ship. It's only drawback is its very limited fire rate of 1 bullet per shot.



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Looks like the Covenant is back in the neighborhood.

The gameplay of 0 day Attack on Earth is an open world shmup that reminds me a lot of Thunder Force II and Desert Strike, in fact, it bears more resemblance to the Strike series as we have a radar and the aircraft moves like a helicopter. The main objective is to destroy the main objectives, all of them are tagged as orange targets on the radar and orange arrows in the screen. You can also destroy the regular enemies (green targets), but they're will be respawning forever until the timer runs out, their only purpose in the game is for the sake of adding more points to your score.
One of the worst problems that I have with this game is the limited range of your standard shots, if you've played Thunder Force II, you'll realize the "Air-to-Air" weapons like the Twin Shot ran across the screen, giving you the chance of taking down the enemies in front of you so you could have a better chance of taking down the ground based ones with your short ranged Air-to-Ground weaponry. In 0 day's case, there's enemies that goes down, dodging the default weapon and they can be vulnerable until they're on the same height as your ship's firing, and to make things worse, your shots are between short to middle ranged, forcing you to get closer to your enemies, this could cause problems with some of the enemies. There's also the enemy that stucks to your ship and drain your energy until you die, or unless your AI controlled friends destroy it for you. Although is more convenient to take the enemy by yourself with your regular shots, if it attaches, you can destroy it with a bomb.
Having AI controlled allies is good enough since they provide some sort of backup, but they can't pick the Power Up items dropped by the enemies, making them useless almost 90% of the times, but at least they're more functional than the atrocious AI partner in LJN's X-Men game.



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In the Seventh Day, ye fight a boss.

The game has a total of 21 missions splitted in 3 cities: New York, Tokyo and Paris, giving you a small World Tour of alien destruction. Each mission is a day of the week and in the 7th day you'll be sent to a boss fight, while two of them are one single target, the Tokyo stage consist of three objectives.



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AWACS Megistus: We've lost Sugiura One.

Life and Death is quite of a matter, since your ship has 4 HP Blocks, but the enemy damage will vary depending on what hits you, so you can lose a fraction or a whole block. Fortunately, you are given 3 lives and if you ran out of bombs and get killed, your bomb stock will be refilled on the next life.



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*Insert "Puchauuuuung!" death sound from Contra.*

Starting the mission all over is the least of your problems. Failing missions may result in losing your hard earned rank. Blew it and you'll be kicked down to Airman faster than you can say "Astrologist Mona Megistus".



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I've spend 3 hours to unlock this plane. Good Lord...

Earning a new rank isn't just decorative, sometimes it helps you to unlock new planes. While the new planes add more variety to the game, the feature falls apart as they have the same weapons as the Type-A aircraft, and to make things worse they deliver the same damage, reducing the whole premise to a simply "decorational" as they're basically the same default planes.


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Helicopter-A "Ally Racing Edition"

Here's another screw up: Along with the new ships, you can get "Types" for your default planes. Like the "B" planes, the change is only graphical since their weapons deliver the same amounts of damage to the enemies, killing the reward feeling of unlocking the ship since they look like they had the idea but they didn't knew how to execute it, or makes the game feel like demo of some sorts.



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Conglaturation !!!, You've completed a great game.
And prooved the justice of our culture.
Now go rest our heroes!


With all the odds against the game, the ending is also on the same league: A few words and then comes the credits to "reward" your patience through 21 repetitive stages.
But what's more bewildering is to realize who was behind this disgrace.



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Yes, these are the responsibles of this game.

You've readed that right. Is really hard to believe Square-Enix is behind this lame shooter. Yeah, the same guys who brought us the amazing Einhander came up with this poor excuse of an open world shmup that feels more like a cheap phone app from a chinese developer, unless Square wanted to insult themselves.


While the gameplay is on the negatives, the graphic department is the opposite as we have a sense of augmented reality with the 3D buildings placed over the satellite imagery that, thanks to the angle used they already look three dimensional even if you rotate the camera, that's something to appreciate and applaud on this game. While the ship designs are between the generic to real world inspired, the enemies are who get the best part with the impressive detailing, especially the UFO's of the Tokyo stages.

The music is your typical RPG-like battle theme with fanfarrious influences and a slight reminiscence of Shiro Sagisu's themes from Neon Genesis Evangelion.
The staff roll theme is unique since it relies on the hard rocking, that's because Go Sato (Raiden IV, Thunder Force VI) composed it. All of these are the only positive aspects of this game.



0 DAY CURIOSITIES ON EARTH
- Helicopter-B's appearance slightly looks like a Pave Low/Black Stallion helicopter.
- Reciprocating-B plane resembles the P-38 Lightning.
- X-B is a ripoff of the F-117 Nighthawk.




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Well, you didn't respected them with this game.

How ironic. They release a trash shmup and they claim they respect legendary shmups. 0 day Attack on Earth had a lot of potential, this could be the Thunder Force II for the new generation, but instead it fails miserably due to the wasted possibilities.
Even Project Root was better than this.



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This is an obvious "NO" on the "Lea Scale".
Fan of Transformers, Shmups and Anime-styled Girls. You're teamed up with the right pilot!
Bringing you shmup and video game reviews with humorous criticism.

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