0 Day Attack On Earth Review

It amazes us how this city can take a lickin' and keep on tickin'.

Humans versus aliens is a theme that’s constantly been visited in video games, but it’s a formula that Square Enix hasn’t messed around with since the good ol’ days of Einhander.  That’s why we were excited to check out 0 Day Attack On Earth, a sci-fi title pitting you and up to three of your friends against an invading armada hell bent on taking over Earth.  Unfortunately, that excitement waned after about an hour of play, when we found the game’s flaws too hard to overcome.  The aliens win this round.

The plot is barely there.  Aliens have taken over New York, Tokyo and Paris, surrounding open areas with dark red clouds and shooting at anything that moves in the sky.  In retaliation, the government has sent flying gunships, manned by you and your friends, to take them down.  It won’t be easy, though.  The larger alien spacecraft are packing all kinds of firepower, and the smaller ones can zip right in and grab hold of your ship until it’s destroyed.

0 Day Attack On Earth has a pretty good Xbox Live set-up, with you and up to three of your friends working together in co-op to bring down the alien armada.  However, it’s executed poorly.  It takes forever to get a session going, due to the fact that very few players are in the lobby (save for a few Square Enix fans).  And even if you do find fellow pilots, the game runs into so much slowdown and lag, it isn’t worth it.

That leaves single player, and it’s no better.  Flying solo removes the frustrating technical issues, but new ones emerge with your stupid AI partners.  They fly around aimlessly, doing little to no good in assisting you with alien extermination.  This is even harder to take when a leech grabs your ship, and no one comes to your rescue.  Seriously, you’re screaming, “Help me!” for like ten seconds and, nine out of ten times, they fail to save you.  As a result, you’re dead, starting all over again.  Throw a totally unfair time limit on top of that (five minutes to take down a number of bosses is near impossible on 0 Day’s higher difficulty), and you’ve got a game that’s not nearly as fun as it should’ve been.  That’s too bad, because the dual analog stick gameplay (one for control, one for shooting) is acceptable.

Oh, aliens. Couldn't you have attacked us when we could afford a good military force?

With only three cities to invade and so many problems in both single and multiplayer, it’s hard to justify the game’s boosted 1,200 Microsoft point ($15) cost.  Even at 800 points, this is a questionable purchase.

It’s not a total loss.  The presentation is pretty good, with huge, menacing enemies lurking around each stage and some beautifully designed cities.  Still, they’re almost invincible to damage.  If you send a huge boss alien screaming and collapsing to its death, it leaves almost no mark on the surrounding buildings.  (Perhaps the government knew they were coming…?)  The audio has some pretty good radio chatter and kitschy sci-fi themes playing in the background.  It’s above-average, but it’s not the best we’ve heard.

After playing through the excellent Gyromancer, we’re sad that Square Enix couldn’t give us an equally enjoyable romp with 0 Day Attack On Earth.  Had more effort gone into single-player AI reaction (seriously, wake up, pods) and multiplayer, this could’ve been the video game equivalent of Independence Day.  Instead, it’s more like Mars Attacks!, and we don’t mean that in a good way.