Introduction.
If you stumbled upon this game, chances are you'll probably ask a question: What is Invader, and why haven't I ever heard of this title before? It was the same for me. I first heard of Invader a few weeks ago while looking up the rare and obscure titles from GBA library. Upon finding of this game's existence, I thought I'd give it a try, without setting up my expectations too high.
Invader is a vertical shmup game, created by little-known developer, going by the name of Formula. It was their 4th, and last finished game before they disbanded. Little is known about the release of Invader, except for that it was sold only in Europe and a small number of copies ever existed, contributing even more to this game's lack of popularity.
First impressions.
Upon launching the game, the player is greeted with a very climatic and well-done intro. The music that plays during that moment is easily one of the best I've heard from a GBA title. That alone got me excited and anxious to play the game. However, after launching the story mode and playing a few levels, my excitement completely died out.
Story.
While I agree that the story shouldn't be the main focus for a shmup, it should at least keep the player interested for their first time clearing the game. However, after the impressive intro, the rest of the story feels so generic and bland, that you might think the game would be better off without it. You'll at least be grateful that you can skip the tedious dialogue at the beginning of Arcade mode by pressing B.
Sound.
I honestly thought that the game's soundtrack would be as captivating as the fantastic music played during the intro. However, the rest of the soundtrack is, to say the least, bland and easily forgettable. Music played during the gameplay fails to bring any feelings of distress or danger. It doesn't fit the great atmosphere created during the game's intro. Sound effects of shooting and killing enemies are very generic and fail to leave any sort of impression or impact on the player.
Graphics.
I have to admit, considering GBA's limited hardware capabilities, the game looks very detailed. The backgrounds are different for each stage and constantly change when flying. All ships produce a shadow that gives the game better depth despite being a 2D shooter. Many of the enemies aren't sprites, but 3D objects as well. You can pick up a variety of 5 different weapon upgrades, and all of them produce very distinct and detailed projectiles that are pleasant to the eye.
However, the great variety of graphical effects make it terribly difficult to see what's going on around you. The ever-changing backgrounds make noticing bullets, and sometimes even enemy ships, eye-straining and frustrating. This is escalated to a whole new level by the fact that your ship's projectiles are way too pronounced and occupy too much of the small screen's size. If that wasn't enough, each enemy you kill can drop up to a dozen of gold coins that fall down across the screen, which obscures your limited field of vision even more.
I wasn't particularly impressed by the enemies you fight in the game. The intro showed promise of alien-like creatures, while during gameplay you fight generic flying ships, and occasionally kill something that resembles an alien. However, the bosses look detailed and pretty impressive, except for one or two that are 3D-animated and, honestly, would look much better as 2D-animated sprites.
Gameplay.
Many people have praised this game for being "hardcore" in terms of difficulty. I won't deny that the game is very challenging. However, the challenge comes from the fact that most of the time you won't even see the bullet that hit you. The visibility of objects on the screen is terrible, due to reasons I described when talking about the game's graphics. Don't get me wrong - I love challenging games. However, Invader's only challenge is being able to see the bullets that blend in together with distracting backgrounds, dozens of falling golden coins and your own ship's projectiles. Most of the time you won't even know what killed you.
If the poor visibility wasn't enough to discourage people from playing the game, there's also a second grave matter that completely ruins the game - the lack of balance. Let's start off with your ship's upgrades. Your default blasters are absolutely terrible in terms of damage and area of effect. Obviously, you'll want to replace it with one of the five different weapon types that are dropped by enemies. Out of those five, only two are worth picking up. The other three are significantly inferior, to the point where I'd call them useless.
During gameplay, you'll quickly notice that some parts of the levels are way too challenging, while other are way too easy. There's little in-between sweet spot in terms of difficulty. Some enemies will appear without warning from the bottom of the screen, so unless you memorize it, you'll probably crash into them and die instantly. Other times, you'll be flying for long periods of time through enemies that pose no threat at all, which feels like a big waste of time. There's little moments when the challenge is on-point, it's usually one of the extremes - too easy or too hard.
And when you arrive at the bosses, you'll be disappointed because half of them will die in 15 seconds or less. And again, boss attack patterns are either way too easy to evade, or nearly impossible to dodge. The difficulty comes only from learning where the safe spots are during the fight.
Apart from the main Arcade mode, there are a few other modes you can play. One of them is Boss Attack, where you fight only the bosses. In this mode, you'll usually be stuck with one of the inferior weapons, which makes the bosses a little more difficult to kill than usually. Still, this doesn't change the fact that bosses still die way too quickly to make those fights challenging or enjoyable.
There's also the Survival mode, which plays exactly the same as Arcade with the difference of having only one life at the start and no continues. You can still get more lives by picking them up at certain parts of the levels, or each time you get 10.000 points.
Last game mode is 2-Player Arcade, which could potentially be fun, but makes seeing the bullets even less feasible because you now have two people filling the screen with their ships' projectiles. Also, with the game being so obscure, it's difficult to get a hold of even one copy of it, not to mention two copies. Even if you manage to get two copies, the multiplayer experience leaves a lot to be desired. During one hour of playing, we got desynchronized at least 5 times, which resets the gameplay to the last checkpoint, and we also got "disconnected" for no obvious reason, which means only one of us could continue playing the game.
Play Time/Replayability.
The game only has 8 stages and can be beaten in less than one hour. However, due to the difficulty of not being able to see the bullets very well, and the fact that you have to memorize certain parts of the level because of bad level design, it will probably take at least a few hours to clear all 8 stages for the first time.
After that, you might think to clear the game on higher difficulties, or try the second storyline with the other pilot. However, the only differences in higher difficulties are the inflated HP values of enemies, which of course means they will stay alive longer to shoot more bullets that you can barely see in the first place. Oh, and don't bother with the second storyline - it's exactly the same as the first one, except for a difference of pilot's name and profile picture.
This game doesn't support save function, which hurts the game's replayability. You cannot save your high scores and beating the game on different modes doesn't unlock anything at all. So there's no real incentive to keep playing the game for longer than a few evenings.
Final Recommendation.
I would only recommend this game to collectors who like to have rare games - this game is certainly one of the rarest GBA games because of low quantity of copies produced. However, I wouldn't say it's a "hidden gem", like some people like to call it because of the game's difficulty. The difficulty is served in such a bad way, that it leaves a bad taste in your mouth even if you become good at this game. Even if you're a shmup fan, I still wouldn't recommend this game for you.