Onslaught

Onslaught is a video game that was released by Hewson in 1989 for the Amiga and subsequently ported to the Atari ST, MS-DOS, and Mega Drive. The game is a fantasy-themed platform game with an eerie soundtrack and graphic violence^[1] in North America on February 23, 2009,^[2] and in Japan on March 3, 2009.

Gameplay – Onslaught

Onslaught sees the player as a member of a military team sent to a research colony on a distant planet after contact is lost. Upon arrival the team is attacked by swarms of cyborg insects, which the player must destroy and ultimately uncover what happened to the colony. The game features 13 levels grouped into tiers, with the player needing to pass all stages in a tier and defeat a boss in order to progress to the next one.

Like other Onslaught games in the genre, Onslaught uses the pointer function of the Wii Remote to aim and the Nunchuk to move. Motion controls are also utilized with a throwing motion of the Nunchuk used to toss grenades and waggling of the Remote to reload. Motion controls are also used to wield a laser whip, and to wipe off insect blood which can blind and damage the player. Players can also issue simple orders to two squad mates who provide additional support, while some levels give the player the chance to pilot a heavily armed vehicle.

The Onslaught game also features online score-based competitive and co-operative multiplayer for up to 4 players through the Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection.

Plot – Onslaught

At an unspecified point in the future, the Space Development Bureau sends research vessels loaded with EICs, Or Enhanced Insect Cyborgs, to various unexplored planets in hopes of the EICs terraforming them, and thus making them suitable for colonization. However the Onslaught games contact with several of the vessels is lost, ultimately leaving the fate of their crews and EICs unknown.

The Onslaught games Several years later, the Bureau receives a distress signal from one of the missing ships, originating from the planet HS-0204. In response, the Bureau dispatches several response teams to investigate the planet.

Development – Onslaught

Despite featuring a score-based competitive multiplayer mode, the exclusion of a deathmatch mode from the Onslaught games is the consequence of Hudson’s core design philosophy which prohibits explicit violence between people playing Onslaught game. Another design decision was the focus on attaining high scores and rankings compared to simply completing objectives as with other games in the genre.^[3]

Reception – Onslaught

WiiWare World scored Onslaught a 9/10, praising the online multiplayer and the replay value of the single player campaign.^[4] Official Nintendo Magazine gave it 79%, also praising the multiplayer but believing the story mode to be “extremely dull with a plodding pace”.^[5]

GamesRadar gave it a 6/10, praising the solid controls but also noted the Onslaught game’s dull presentation and generic narrative.^[6] IGN, which also gave it 6/10, ultimately summed it up as “a huge mess of different quality standards”, citing poor localization and slow and repetitive Onslaught gameplay, but thought the game was still somewhat fun “in an odd, disjointed, Earth Defense Force kind of way”.^[7]