Super Trench Attack Review
Platform: Switch (reviewed)
Developer: Storybird
Publisher: Storybird
Release Date: Dec 19th 2019
Price: $8.00
Friendly hello amid a hail of gunfire? What fun!
The ordeal begins when your country is attacked by the evil Black Army. Paired with your mute, useless monkeys attack (not kidding) mask-wearing sidekick, you must repel the invasion. The enemy is usually simple infantry armed with handguns, rifles, a few heavier weapons like machine guns and grenades and for some unsolved mysteries reason brooms. When hit, they die exaggerated screaming bloody deaths unless your attack blows off their clothes. In these cases, they cover themselves in shame and then die exaggerated screaming bloody deaths. Practically a laugh a minute! There is some artillery and armor to deal with, but in general this is for the poor bloody infantry. When you are killed, you simply return to headquarters to try again.
Someone saw either too much Benny Hill or perhaps not enough.
As for the story, the cut scenes are painfully unfunny. The authors are obviously trying to channel Benny Hill and Monty Python, but it's as if they only heard about them from a third party and never watched either. The result is forced, unfunny and often just devastatingly awkward if anyone else is in the room. You can also loot valuables like gold and jewels from the battlefield and then promptly blow it playing blackjack. (Ok that last is a totally infantry thing to do.)
As the great Billy Mays frequently said, “But wait, there’s more.” The controls are half-baked. They are imprecise and generally clunky. I suspect the team that ported the game from the PC decided to emulate the mouse rather than fully convert the game to the switch controller. For example, to aim, you need to move the cursor and point it at, or behind, an enemy rather than tilting as in most other games. This is so time consuming and annoying that it detracts from the game. The only place where this is useful are those situations where precision rather than speed is called for, such as eliminating land mine. An unexpected bright spot are Boss encounters. These are quite fun if you suffered through learning the controls. They allow you a lot of leeway to deal with powerful enemies. For example, blowing up enemy vehicles with explosives instead of facing them in a standup fight.
Bottom line: Super Trench Attack fires at comedy but shoots itself in the foot instead. I recognize humor is subjective, but this never ascended beyond the eye-roll level for me. The controls, available arsenal and story are lacking. That said, I got used to the controls eventually and the basic game is playable. As stated I liked the boss fights and honestly it’s not a $60 blockbuster, so it might be worth a try for fans of infantry shooters.
The Bad:
Painfully unfunny
Mediocre controls
The Good:
Kick-butt boss fights
Reasonable price