>for uninnovative gameplay, as you just shoot balls and the game mostly plays itself for you

I'd disagree. The shooting itself is as old as space invaders, but there is a neat mechanic there worth exploring regarding the combinations of powerups and 'character powers' IMO. You have to choose what to fuse/powerup to keep the damage scaling well enough (though the amount of combinations isn't large enough to last more than a couple weekends, I'll give you that).