Endurance: Space Action Review

Ivan Panasenko is the developer and EpiXR is the publisher of Endurance: Space Action. Endurance is very much like the game Ailment, but longer. The major difference between the two games is that Ivan Panasenko is the main creativity source behind Endurance. Although Ivan worked on both games, Endurance is his to claim.

The gameplay for Endurance: Space Action is a twin stick shooter with no rogue like elements. As the story begins, we find ourselves picking a character to play and there are quite a few options. All the characters have different base stats and are stronger in some areas more than others. Regardless who you pick to play as, you can upgrade your skills with credits you find in chests or earn from kills. The different skills are; Health Regeneration, Movement Speed, Trap Detection, and shield regeneration. The best skills I found were the Health regeneration upgrades.

During my playthrough, I found the gameplay quite fun for the first few levels. The objective is to make it to the end of the level with limited lives (which you have to pay 200 credits for) or retry a level from the beginning. If quick enough, the player could buy a quick heal for 200 credits if they have enough on hand to avoid dying. The game only saves at the beginning of levels, so the best strategy I found was to regenerate health before loading into the next level and saving up credits for desperate health boosts. Objectives are highlighted on the map as a red icon, and the survivor must locate terminals to open doors to advance. Pressing the left trigger brings up the map enlarging it and makes it easier to find the right path, a godsend for some of the levels which are actual mazes to get through. The ‘X’ and ‘B’ button will bring up the weapon and character skill upgrade menus. ‘A’ interacts and you can shoot or slap with the right trigger. When moving into some rooms it activates enemies who are actually survivors themselves.

The main plot of Endurance: Space Action is we are the lone survivor on a research facility space ship stuck watching horrible events go down. There are 2504 people aboard on Endurance, there are experiments being conducted on human clones with a virus called Serenity-11. The goal of the virus is to react in a positive way for long span space travel, to help the travellers not go insane, but it turned the majority hostile instead. Anyone who has the virus views those who do not as violent enemies, and they attack on site. In the first level, it’s a fist swinging filled massacre, but later details explain that we were actually defending ourselves because, “It’s either us or them”. The main objective is to endure the onslaught to the end of the level, later there are levels where you have to defend or flee to safety forcing you to change playstyles briefly.

Some of the enemies you come across are humans for the most part. In later levels drones, robots, slugs and more are introduced for the player to defend themselves against. Traps are also scattered all around and some are hidden, requiring a high skill level in trap detection to notice them. As the player progresses through the levels, more and more weapons become available. Enemies are highlighted with a red outline when aiming at them, so harming friendlies isn’t an issue. The weapons add variety to gameplay and are fun to find and use. However, there are no weapon upgrades, finding a new weapon counts as the upgrade, yet you can still swap to another weapon using the bumpers. There is weapon durability which can break a gun if used too much. The more you fire your weapon, the more it degrades.

Throughout each level, there are extra rooms filled with an occasional chest or locker that can be opened. These chests and lockers have a chance to spawn a power up for the player or a weapon which also acts as a repair kit. If the player is thorough, they will be finding health boosters and shields to help give an extra edge in battle. I found that the endgame was significantly easier when exploring for the health boosters to give an extra 200 HP that I kept as I progressed and was able to regenerate. As for the difficulty of the game, you can select between three settings; Easy, Normal, or Hard. As for the achievements in the game, there are only 10 and all can be earned in just one playthrough on any difficulty of choosing. The game is about 5 hours if you care for the pop-up text and the story. The player does have the choice to skip all dialogue and just play for the twin stick shooter action.

The graphics for Endurance are pixelated with a top-down view. It looks very much like its predecessor or cousin, Ailment. It has some cleaner looking visuals for the weapon and health bar read outs, but looks like a mobile game port. Yet, Endurance manages to look retro while still feeling fresh. The sound quality of the game is high, listening to the aery music in the background can set the tone of the game from the get-go. The feeling of dread that something is around the corner waiting to attack the moment you get nearby. The main theme is the song you will hear the most while playing. When getting attacked, the audio will switch to combat music and I found that I can reset the combat music often. That was the only annoying aspect of the game, Fighting a wave of enemies and the music resets every 30 seconds to hear the same track again. There is no voice acting and only minor sound effects in the game. The music is the biggest selling point from the sound quality perspective.

Endurance: Space Action isn’t long, though I will cut the game some slack since it is fairly priced for the amount of time and enjoyment a player will experience if picking up the game. If you enjoyed Ailment, then this title is for you. It’s longer than Ailment and has more witty comments said by our character while playing. Just a fair warning though, the gameplay can become repetitive after a while, running around and shooting trying to avoid the same gunfire in return. Endurance is a action packed shooter with a cliché, but fully aware, story. The game actively makes jokes throughout about it self and the characters even says at times, “They would rather be playing Ailment”.

Conclusion

A fun single player twin stick shooter worth checking out for the appropriate price. Between the self-deprecating humor and the pop culture references to Ripley, this game has earned my recommendation. It may not keep the player drawn in for dozens of hours, but some will fall in love with this retro twin stick shooter.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.