The 3DS’s best Gears of War-like comes to Switch.
IronFall: Invasion originally released on Nintendo 3DS back in 2015. I reviewed it for the now defunct eShop site 8-Worlds News and was absolutely blown away by it on a technical level. It brought Gears of War-inspired gameplay to the 3DS with visuals that still stand as some of the best on the platform. Nearly ten years later, this remaster has arrived on Switch. While now and then you’re reminded of the limitations of its launch platform, I can’t help but enjoy IronFall: Invasion even with plenty of flaws.
The game plays out as a third-person cover shooter, with obvious similarities to Xbox’s Gears of War franchise. Approaching a piece of cover and pressing B will cause your character to snap to it. From here you can slide along it, and hold ZL to lean out and fire. This is a very by-the-numbers shooter and even uses a similar reload mechanic to the Gears of War series in that timing your reload to an on screen prompt will grant you a bonus. While it isn’t the most original, it generally plays well. IronFall: Invasion didn’t set a particularly high bar in terms of gameplay innovation back on 3DS and that hasn’t really changed here. That being said, having a proper dual analogue setup rather than the circle pad pro or New 3DS C-nub makes a massive difference. As a result the moment to moment traversal and gunplay feels significantly better on Switch than it did on 3DS. On the other side of the coin are the various touch screen-based puzzle segments. On 3DS, these were built to be interacted with via the touch screen and all worked very well. On Switch button controls have obviously been added for playing docked, but inexplicably touch controls are not available when playing handheld. Most of these are so obviously built with a touch screen in mind that interacting with them via a standard controller feels downright awkward.
Like the original, game modes are split up into campaign and multiplayer options. The campaign sees you playing as both Jim Woper, a giant battle armor-wearing marine straight out of the early 2000s, and Sam Finch, your tech support with a pistol. The story, while not particularly gripping, focuses on an alien invasion and some suspicious scientific research. The majority of the campaign focuses on Jim, but occasionally you’ll swap over to Sam. While Jim’s stages play out as repetitive–though reasonably well structured–corridor shooter levels, Sam feels as though her levels were supposed to be stealth stages but they never added a stealth mechanic. So instead you’re just retreading very similar corridors but with less armor and only a pistol. Occasionally you’ll also get some one off setpiece moments like a turret shooter or some sniper focused segments, which in my experience played great and make a nice change of pace.
Multiplayer unfortunately seems pretty unpopulated at the moment. I was never able to successfully find players or an existing game. You can however hop into the survival mode which challenges you to take on waves of enemies and see how many you can take out in a given time limit. Back on 3DS there was a limited multiplayer demo that no doubt helped populate the servers; it would be interesting if a similar move here could help make the multiplayer modes more active.
Visually IronFall: Invasion looked remarkable on 3DS and it has been nicely updated for Switch. Developer VD-Dev has always had a knack for getting incredible visual performance out of any platform they work with so it’s no surprise that we get a full 1080p docked, 720p handheld, and 60fps when playing on Switch. You can actually choose in the options between rendering the game at 90% or 100% resolution. I wound up sticking with 100% and was only rarely able to drop the frame rate slightly. The 90% option ought to give you a very stable level of performance. Environments themselves absolutely hold up on a big screen. VD-Dev has done an excellent job of going in by hand and updating every single texture to modern HD standards. The game winds up having a similar look and technical suite to VD-Dev’s other Switch release, Rise: Race the Future. While the visuals aren’t quite as mind blowing on Switch as they were on 3DS, this is still a very good looking game outside of some stiff character animations.
IronFall: Invasion was a perfectly solid third-person shooter wrapped in an incredibly technically accomplished shell back on 3DS. I would list it as one of the most technically impressive 3DS games ever made, up there with Resident Evil Revelations, Star Fox 64 3D, and Nano Assault. Without the context of the 3DS, IronFall: Invasion on Switch sorta just winds up being a perfectly acceptable third-person shooter. It is still technically excellent, but it isn’t as remarkable now as it was back in 2015. Still if you want a cheesy Gears of War-like game developed by a small talented indie studio, IronFall: Invasion is worth checking out.
