[Review] IRONFALL Invasion | Nintendo Switch

Get ready to take back Earth from the Dyxide invaders in IRONFALL Invasion! The game originally released back in 2015 for the Nintendo 3DS and pushed the console to its limits as probably one of the best looking games on the handheld console. Now, the talented folks at VD-Dev, have brought IRONFALL Invasion to Nintendo Switch and it looks and plays even better than ever.

The story of IRONFALL Invasion, follows a crack military team who are taking the fight to the invading alien species known as Dyxides who have overrun Earth. In the first mission of the game, players take on the role of Jim, and is tasked with infiltrating a luxury beach resort where a scientist called Flemming is hiding out. Finding and extracting Flemming is of the utmost importantance as his Power Armor invention could help Jim and his unit turn the tide on the Dyxide Invaders.

Upon arrival to the hotel, Jim and the team are ambushed by the enemy and is forced to engage in combat. After repelling the enemy forces, Jim explores the hotel to learn that Flemming is nowhere to be found and has possibly been abducted by the enemy. It is up to Jim and his team to find where the Dyxides have taken the Flemming and put a stop to their invasion once and for all.

In terms of gameplay, IRONFALL Invasion is a third-person shooter game that will task the player with undertaking missions through eleven environments. You begin the game with an assault rifle to keep enemies at bay but as you play through the game, you will find more powerful weapons like granade launchers, shotguns, rocket launchers and sniper rifles. In each of the game’s missions in the main campaign, you will have to fight your way through numerous enemies whilst navigating your way through each level. You can take aim using the ZL button and press ZR to fire. there is an aim assist option that will help you focus on enemies initially but you will need to move your cursor manually to keep your reticule trained on their position.

I should point out that IRONFALL Invasion does not provide a tutorial so if you want to know what the controls are and what they do, you would have to check out the controls menu in Settings. That said, I shall cover the basics quickly. As is common with these kind of games, the left joystick is to move your character and the right joystick moves the camera. The A button is to interacting with objects and B is used to duck for cover. If you are near a corner or a potential cover position, pressing B will move your character over to that position.

For evasive manuevers, the Y button allows your to do an evasive roll and can even vault over certain obstacles. The X button brings up your weapon wheel and the R button is to reload. This is quite important to know as you will spend a lot of time in firefights so it is always handy to quick reload between respites rather than waiting until your clip is empty.

In terms of game modes, IRONFALL Invasion has a single player mode consisting of 11 missions, a single player survival mode, and a multiplayer mode that allows up to six players to play online in free-for-all, 2 vs. 2 vs. 2, 3 vs. 2 and 3 vs. 2 matches,. There are several maps based on the environments in the single-player campaign that you can fight on and there is a choice of six characters to play as. In regards of weapons, your loadout consists of a light and a heavy weapon, but you do have a selection of three different weapons in each weight class to choose from. For those who would like to up the ante in online sessions, you can also add bets with in-game credits so that the winner of the match will collect a prize pool and the losers will lose some of their credits.

As we come to the end of this Explay, I must say that IRONFALL Invasion is actually quite enjoyable. The gameplay is engaging and I quite like the minigames and puzzles like connecting the wires to open doors, rotating cell structures to neutralize biological agents or moving plutonium rods between cooling pools to stabilize them. I will point out that the voice acting is probably the weakest point of this game as it falls flat a lot of the time and is very wooden. On the flip side, the visuals do look very, very nice and the gameplay and frame rate is very smooth.

IRONFALL Invasion is one of those games that you can easily give a miss to but if you enjoy third person shooters, there is no reason why you wouldn’t like this one. The multiplayer is fun, although a little empty when it comes to matchmaking as the community still needs to be built up. That said, if more players pick up this game, then there will be more players to play with.