Perhaps it’s because of all of the time I’ve spent in arcades over the course of my life, but I find that sometimes I can be a sucker for games that are simple but do their thing pretty well. To be honest, they may not even have to do them well, I may even be willing to settle for simply doing them acceptably for a little while to generally be happy. Not every game has to have story, depth, or deep game systems, sometimes just some simple visceral shooting things up can be enough to be engaging. 

Infantry Attack is an old-school shoot-em-up, generally putting you in control of an armed turret, and your job is simply to mow down everything in sight. While it starts out simple enough, with you needing to quickly move between generic cannon fodder soldiers, as you progress things will get a little more challenging. Soldiers who are armored up with blast shields will test your aim, crazed dudes with explosive vests will keep you on your toes with their fast movement, though they can also be fun as if you time blowing them up just right they can be very helpful to your defense. Mechanical threats like drones, tanks, and even enemy fighter jets will also periodically spice things up, making sure you’re staying alert and reactive to what you see coming your way.

Now, as you may have guessed, this isn’t an experience steeped in nuance. You have a gun, your enemies make for engaging moving targets, and shooting things up can be fun for at least a little while. There are minor upgrades, mostly limited to improving your rate of fire, so there’s nothing game-changing that will suddenly amp the excitement up to 11, it instead generally keeps the needle at perhaps a steady 6 most of the time. You will be able to acquire upgrades that improve performance or give you helpers of some kind, but these generally feel like they’re earned in a linear fashion and there usually aren’t divergent upgrade paths to choose from, making it all feel pretty locked in.

In the end you’re left with the game feeling roughly the same 10 or more levels in as it did when you started, but since it executes what action it has pretty well that doesn’t have to be a bad thing. I wouldn’t consider it to be terribly attractive or to have clear breakout appeal for everyone, but sometimes simplicity can work for the right crowd and for the right price (though I now will include my traditional bemoaning of the presence of cosmetic DLC as is customary). While it may not have great depth or variety, it implements its core gameplay well and can be fun in short sessions.