Retro Arcade Shooter – Attack From Pluto

Genre: Bullet Hell Shmup

Players: 1

Game Company Bad Behavior Profile Page: Digital Game Group

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Review:

Attack From Pluto is a Bullet Hell Shmup released on the Nintendo Switch in 2020 that advertises itself as “three classic arcade space shooter games in one game!”, and I suppose that’s technically accurate, well, aside from the word “classic”. I highly doubt anyone is likely to see anything here as a “classic”.

In terms of presentation, what’s here seems sufficient, but painfully generic. The game uses 3D models for its ships and the screen soon fills up with bullets as per genre norm, but there’s nothing here that’s visually all that memorable. The sound, on the other hand, is outright bad, with hits on enemies not making any sort of noise at all, and everything being drowned out by the game’s placid, out-of-place soundtrack. Oh, and the menu screens seem like placeholders that were never replaced in a final release. If you told me this entire game was constructed from premade assets, I would believe you. Why a game this simple and generic-looking takes up a full 1GB of space in the Nintendo Switch’s memory, I have no idea.

As for the gameplay… ugh…

Okay, so you know how the game advertises “three games in one”? Well, these are separated in the menu as “Vol 1”, “Vol 2”, and “Vol 3”. Visually, there’s little to set them apart aside from that the first and third “Volumes” are vertical-scrollers and the second one is a side-scroller.

The first and third games are slow-paced, mechanically boring, and have you firing a weapon that’s both slow and doesn’t seem to do much damage. In the first game, your bullets nullify the enemy’s bullets. In the second game, your ship is far too large and moves too quickly for you to dodge enemy bullets, which have trails that make them seem to take up more room than they do. The third game is probably the best of the lot here, but all three are pretty terrible. And in all of them, it’s often the best strategy to just tank hits and let your huge life bar bear the brunt of things so you can collect the plentiful pickups that drop, rather than trying to dodge bullets.

Look, this game is a mess. There are so many good Shmups on the Nintendo Switch, I cannot fathom any reason you should play this one. I paid $2 for it on sale and I still feel ripped off, and its usual $6 price tag is just absurd. This is a generic-looking, poorly-designed trio of Shmups that is not worth your time.

tl;dr – Attack From Pluto is nominally three Bullet Hell Shmups in one, but all of them are poorly-designed and generic-looking. Don’t waste your time and money on this.

Grade: D

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This game has been nominated for one or more of eShopperReviews 2020 Game Awards:

Runner-Up: The “Why is this taking so much space on my memory card!?” Award

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