Overpowered 1 – Mars Infestation

Overpowered 1 – Mars Infestation might be marketed as a ‘survival shooter’ and looks as though it’s the latest entry into PSN’s growing list of Vampire Survivors clones but this is actually a twin-stick shooter.  You know, those things we used to get tons of before the auto-shooting rogue-likes took over the entire scene.  And it comes to us by way of eastasiasoft who are on both developer and publisher duties for this one.

With barely any story to worry about (the year is 2050, humanity has relocated to Mars, creatures there are kicking off about it), let’s take a look at the gameplay.  What you get here is a top down shooter (well, it’s actually got some weird forced perspective but plays as if it’s top down) and initially you’d be forgiven for thinking this is going to be like all those survivor-like games but, actually, Overpowered 1 is more like the old arcade game Berzerk.  Kind of.

Although you start each of the game’s six stages in a large cavern, parts of it are sectioned off and so the action really only takes part in small areas, smaller than one screen’s worth of space.  Once you step into an area and collect the ‘play’ icon, you’ll have to defend yourself against swarms of enemies for a set amount of time.  Usually somewhere between thirty and ninety seconds.  Enemies come in via black spaces in the walls and if they make contact with you, you’ll lose a life.

One cool design choice is that your lives, score and the time left is displayed in the walls of each space.  It’s a small thing but we thought that was a nice choice.  But anyway, when you survive an encounter, a nearby cache of other icons will become accessible and these vary.  There are points, additional bullets, stronger shots and increased fire rates.  The main thing you want are those additional bullets (not as in ammo, the game doesn’t worry about ammo/reloading at all, but rather an extra bullet in each attack, giving you a spread fire pattern that gets stronger as you find more) and after you’ve grabbed one or two of those you’ll be golden for the rest of the stage probably.

After you clear out each area in a level (usually around five of them), the level is over and you’re returned to the menu.  There’s no upgrading between levels, no permanent progression.   You’ll just start the next level with your basic firepower and you’ll need to do what you just did all over again.  And that’s probably Overpowered 1‘s biggest problem.  There are only four main stages and they all look, and feel, the same.  The second level was the only one to give us any problems (for like a few minutes) and so the difficulty curve isn’t great either.  But mainly you’ll be in very dark spaces doing the same thing for the entirety of these levels.

The last two stages are timed survival levels where you are kept in one space and have to survive for five minutes.  However, by the time you unlock these you’ll no doubt be able to complete them at the first time of asking.  We certainly were.  And so, Overpowered 1 is a bit of a strange game.  It’s got the simplicity of gameplay that you’d get from an auto-battler, except that you have to fire yourself (oh and it’s R2 to shoot rather than the much more preferable aim to shoot) but there’s barely anything else to the game.  Six short, very samey levels with no upgrade mechanics.  You’ll get this finished in an hour probably.

And with it’s simplistic graphics, dreary level layouts and repetitive action, it honestly feels like the game might have been coded in a couple of days.  Aside from the initial level of challenge, which isn’t high but can give new players a bit of early difficulty, and the nice CRT-style glow to the visuals, there’s not really much to like about the game.  But, equally, there’s not much to dislike either.  There’s just not much.

Overpowered 1 is just a very simplistic game with no real depth to it.  Sure, it’s playable enough and we didn’t hate our time with it but that time was brief and nothing much of note happened during it.  Still, it’s good for a couple of quick Platinum trophies as the identical PS4 version is included too and if you want an hour or so of brainless blasting, this might fit the bill.