Earth Defense Force 4.1: Wing Diver the Shooter
released on Nov 22, 2017
A vertical-scrolling shoot ’em up spinoff of Earth Defense Force 4.1.
Also in series
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I got this with the EDF bundle on humble bundle and thought I'd check it out. As far as what the game sets out to accomplish, I believe it does it well. Very short, but decent enough. There are a few hit box issues on normal setting that make the game needlessly difficult, but seemed to be absent in other settings. In the case of getting this game in a bundle or free, check it out. Otherwise unless you like bullet hell games and EDF, probably not worth getting.
Fun, short game. Only about 6 levels. It's cool unlocking different weapons. I will say it is grindy like the main EDF 4.1 where you have to grind armor and weapon drops since unlocked weapons are random. It's also a lot harder than I would have expected. It's not my favorite shmup, but I didn't hate it.
Pretty Average but hey, it was only 2$
Full of bugs, digital and technical.
I fired this up expecting a fun if stupid game about blasting giant bugs like a flying Starship Trooper. I loaded into the first level and the game crashed before I even started.
Not the best first impression but a pretty accurate one for my experience with Wing diver The Shooter.
You see this game is a great idea on paper, a small shoot'em up spin off to EDF 4.1 but it just fails in it's execution in almost every way. That crash was just one of many, nearly every time I fired the game up it crashed loading into the first level, sometimes several times in a row, sometimes at the level end so I play through gaining nothing. Now I was playing on PS5 so there could be backwards compatibility issues. It's also a Unity game which has started to get a bit of an infamous reputation sadly but whatever the cause it was irritating.
The actual game has fun aspects. Shooting bugs is always fun, it's got the same campy dialogue sets the scenes perfectly and that's kind of it. The rest of the game just feels bad really. The levels go at angles and speeds of enemies firing acid that you are pretty likely to get hit and can't fire at all enemies on screen. You have a dodge mechanic but it drains 30% of your energy which you need desperately to attack with. I hated every aspect of this boost mechanic meaning I barely used it as I needed the fire power.
To counter this there are several difficulty levels matching EDF 4.1 (easy, normal, hard, hardest and inferno). Wing diver took the worst aspect of 4.1 though in that you can increase your armour by finding boxes that boost it normal between 10 - 20 a level that some enemies drop. New higher level weapons are collected this way too. In 4.1 this is a great mechanic to slowly feel stronger working through difficulties. That works though because there are 98 levels. Wing Diver has 6.
I mean I love short games, all in on tighter better designed experiences that aren't full of needless bloat and repetition. I feel Wing Diver is merely short though. It's hard to get through the levels on pure skill by their very design once you start going up difficulties which means to beat everything you have to grind. Like a lot. Playing level 1 over and over to get the armour to be able to get through hardest and inferno was soul destroying. I did it as I heard some extra levels unlock. I, foolishly thought they would be new levels, but no just the same 6 with harder variations of the same enemies.
to sum up, even as an EDF fan and a casual shoot'em up fan I found this one hard to swallow. I picked it up in a sale for less than £2, the original price (£18.99 I think) would be super steep for such a threadbare game. It's super short, super grindy, doesn't play hugely well and is pretty buggy, just not the right kind.
Not recommended.
+ Campy dialogue.
+ The only good bug is a dead bug!
- Unstable performance, crashes a lot.
- Super short, only 6 levels which take 40 minutes.
- Grindy in the worst way.
- Extra levels are merely reskins akin to a further difficulty.
I fired this up expecting a fun if stupid game about blasting giant bugs like a flying Starship Trooper. I loaded into the first level and the game crashed before I even started.
Not the best first impression but a pretty accurate one for my experience with Wing diver The Shooter.
You see this game is a great idea on paper, a small shoot'em up spin off to EDF 4.1 but it just fails in it's execution in almost every way. That crash was just one of many, nearly every time I fired the game up it crashed loading into the first level, sometimes several times in a row, sometimes at the level end so I play through gaining nothing. Now I was playing on PS5 so there could be backwards compatibility issues. It's also a Unity game which has started to get a bit of an infamous reputation sadly but whatever the cause it was irritating.
The actual game has fun aspects. Shooting bugs is always fun, it's got the same campy dialogue sets the scenes perfectly and that's kind of it. The rest of the game just feels bad really. The levels go at angles and speeds of enemies firing acid that you are pretty likely to get hit and can't fire at all enemies on screen. You have a dodge mechanic but it drains 30% of your energy which you need desperately to attack with. I hated every aspect of this boost mechanic meaning I barely used it as I needed the fire power.
To counter this there are several difficulty levels matching EDF 4.1 (easy, normal, hard, hardest and inferno). Wing diver took the worst aspect of 4.1 though in that you can increase your armour by finding boxes that boost it normal between 10 - 20 a level that some enemies drop. New higher level weapons are collected this way too. In 4.1 this is a great mechanic to slowly feel stronger working through difficulties. That works though because there are 98 levels. Wing Diver has 6.
I mean I love short games, all in on tighter better designed experiences that aren't full of needless bloat and repetition. I feel Wing Diver is merely short though. It's hard to get through the levels on pure skill by their very design once you start going up difficulties which means to beat everything you have to grind. Like a lot. Playing level 1 over and over to get the armour to be able to get through hardest and inferno was soul destroying. I did it as I heard some extra levels unlock. I, foolishly thought they would be new levels, but no just the same 6 with harder variations of the same enemies.
to sum up, even as an EDF fan and a casual shoot'em up fan I found this one hard to swallow. I picked it up in a sale for less than £2, the original price (£18.99 I think) would be super steep for such a threadbare game. It's super short, super grindy, doesn't play hugely well and is pretty buggy, just not the right kind.
Not recommended.
+ Campy dialogue.
+ The only good bug is a dead bug!
- Unstable performance, crashes a lot.
- Super short, only 6 levels which take 40 minutes.
- Grindy in the worst way.
- Extra levels are merely reskins akin to a further difficulty.