Onslaught sees the player as a member of a military team sent to a research colony on a distant planet after contact is lost.

Upon arrival the team is attacked by swarms of cyborg insects, which the player must destroy and ultimately uncover what happened to the colony.

Another design decision was the focus on attaining high scores and rankings compared to simply completing objectives as with other games in the genre.

[11] Official Nintendo Magazine also praised the multiplayer but believed the story mode to be "extremely dull with a plodding pace".

[7] IGN ultimately summed it up as "a huge mess of different quality standards", citing poor localization and slow and repetitive gameplay, but thought the game was still somewhat fun "in an odd, disjointed, Earth Defense Force kind of way".