_edited_jp.jpg)
Super Mutant Alien Assault Nintendo Switch
Review by Gregory Rodney
Super Mutant Alien Assault (SMAA) is a little treat created by Cybernate and published by Fellow Traveller.
Chris Suffern is the sole member of the development team at Cybernate. He's also pretty much the only employee at Cybernate if you don't count his dog that is supposedly working in R&D. And if you don't believe me check for yourself on his website. Chris is a long-time passionate gamer turned game developer. And this passion project shows a bit of his humor and offers a decent amount of enjoyment.
SMAA is an arcade shooter with platforming elements broken into 3 galaxies or 12 levels. Each level has some sort of object, transporting items, surviving, or resetting hazards. The formula is kept simple by using the same objectives but changing the map layout and enemy type. You start without a weapon and learn to use the vending machines on the map.
When you first start you only have a handful of gun variants and you're given them randomly. As you progress you begin to unlock different guns, explosives, and buffs/abilities. SMAA's best feature is its guns/explosives and how they make everything seem destructive.
They focused a lot on the explosions and it always felt rewarding to hurl all my grenades at once. My favorite weapon was the pogo stick that generated a large blue explosion that sent you flying. Things like the pogo stick are what this game needs to stand out from the rest of the crowd and I seriously need more of that.
It can be an extremely short experience if you usually only play a game once. They give you some incentive to play more by locking the harder difficulty and requiring you to play straight through levels 1-12. But playing on normal you can finish in roughly an hour, two if you're having a really hard time. Personally, a harder difficulty didn't appeal to me seeing that the normal one was just fine.
Currently, SMAA is priced at 9.99 on all platforms. If you're just looking to play through once, for less than an hour, it might not be worth the full price. But playing it on the Nintendo Switch showed how great it could be as a game on the go, so I'd recommend buying it on the switch if you do decide to purchase it.
Final Rating: 👍