CounterAttack: Uprising

Genre: Shmup

Players: 1-4 Co-Op (Local), 2-8 Co-Op (Online)

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Review:

CounterAttack: Uprising is a Shmup released on PC in 2019, ported to Xbox One in 2022, and then ported to Nintendo Switch in 2023. This game takes place in a future where humans have started to colonize space, but disaster strikes when machines on a colony malfunction and start waging war on humanity. Players take the role of a solitary fighter in a futuristic spacecraft who’s the last best hope for humanity.

The presentation here is not at all impressive, using basic, ugly-looking 3D that still manages to have blurry resolutions at times, suffer from texture pop-in, and even suffer from slowdown. What’s more, this game’s synthesized soundtrack is dull and forgettable, and even at times annoying. In short, if we just go off of the presentation, this game looks absolutely terrible.

Yet despite this, CounterAttack: Uprising is an absolute delight to play. The reason for this is simple: customization. This game starts players off with a generous selection of different ship types, all with different benefits and flaws. As you play, you’ll collect the game’s over 600 permanent upgrades that can slot into either the ship’s general slots, or its weapon slots. With players able to add multiple upgrades out of such a massive pool, the potential variations here are staggering.

However, it doesn’t stop there. As you play through the game, you’ll see there’s an upgrade system similar to the Gradius series of games, where players can use pickups to purchase upgrades or save them to get different upgrades later. However, even here, CounterAttack: Uprising adds an interesting twist – one of the final upgrades you can purchase, “Add On”, adds an extra slot to each upgrade, meaning that you can upgrade everything an extra step past its previous maximum. And since you can stack the Add On upgrade as well, you’ll find that by the end of the game you’ll likely be filling the screen with your gunfire, and if you’re smart about how you upgrade you’ll even be taking out some bosses within seconds.

Putting all of this together, CounterAttack: Uprising gives players the opportunity to custom-build a loadout and selectively upgrade their ship to be an absolute monster in battle. And thankfully, the challenge level accounts for this – the game tends to be on the easy side overall, but later levels toss massive hordes of enemies at you, including tons of stronger enemies that would take you a few seconds to take down in earlier levels. In other words, the game gives you the tools to turn yourself into a powerhouse, but it also expects you to use those tools to the fullest.

Once you’ve gotten into the swing of things, you’ll find the game has plenty of opportunities to push yourself, with multiple challenge levels and also branching paths of varying difficulty, ensuring that this game should last a good while even for Shmup veterans.

When it comes to complaints, I already mentioned the terrible presentation and slowdown, but there’s also the issue that when you’re farther in the game and the screen is absolutely filled with yours’ and enemies’ gunfire, it can be harder to see enemies’ gunfire that you need to avoid. Also, unless you have the right ship or upgrade, your spread may not be very good, making it too easy to get boxed-in by enemies who fire a constant stream of horizontal gunfire.

Also, while the game does support online multiplayer, the online lobbies are deserted at this point, so if you want to play with others, you’ll need to bring your own friends. And the game also has a full level editor and campaign editor, even letting you set details like drop rates, which is outstanding… except there’s no way to share your creations with others.

However, despite its flaws, overall I found CounterAttack: Uprising to be a delightful surprise in the genre, and a game that you absolutely should not judge based on its appearance. It may look pretty terrible, but there’s a wonderful Shmup under that ugly exterior.

tl;dr – CounterAttack: Uprising is a Shmup with an absolutely terrible presentation, but truly delightful gameplay with a massive wealth of customization options that let you build toward a delightfully powerful loadout. If you enjoy Shmups, this is definitely one you’ll want to give a chance – it’s not much to look at, but it’s got the goods where it counts.

Grade: B+

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