Lost Wing (XBOX One - PS4 - Switch - PC)

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Sturmvogel Prime
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Lost Wing (XBOX One - PS4 - Switch - PC)

Post by Sturmvogel Prime »

Time for another shmup. Today's review: Lost Wing.

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Shmups go "Pedal to the Metal".

There's few gameplay options, so there's no need to "write novels" about this game and go straight to the points.
CAMPAIGN: The main stages of the game, There's only three of them: Industrial, Forest and Canyon.

There's also other unlockable modes to play and increase the replay value much further.

BLAST: You have one single lap to reach the highest score possible. This one is the fastest way to level up.
TURBO: This one is a reflex-based mode where the objective is to survive 1 lap in a high speed stage stamped with booster pads.
PRECISION: This variation focuses on passing through gates at high speed. If you miss one gate you'll die, something that's gonna happen very often. If you like Superman 64's "Fly through rings" segments, you'll like this one.
BOSS RUN: Fight all the bosses of the game endlessly until you die.

The game is actually a "Race'em Up" game that blends the 3rd view shooting from games like After Burner II with the racing style of S.T.U.N. Runner. For a Race'em up, Lost Wing is focused on high scoring rather than reaching the goal, since the game's pelted with multipliers and score you're granted with a basic yet functional weaponry of single shots with a decent autofire and smart bombs. However, you can't go around shooting non-stop since your shots (or Charges) are limited. I understand the idea of having a smart bomb stock for prevent the game of being too easy, but limiting my default weapon is nonsense.

Although there's no enemies to fight (except spiders in the Forest level and small worms in Canyon), there's plenty of destructible obstacles that justify the weapon's function. To add fun to the destruction, there's multipliers that also work as the Charge shot reload. You can also reload by going at full speed by holding the Right Trigger, while the Left one slows the game's speed, but this costs you your charges. With this explained, the game also makes emphasis on speed and its control in order to survive, as the objective of the game is to dodge obstacles and survive without losing your wings. Losing a wing reduces the speed on the direction the wing damage was taken, and since this is not StarFox to "even" the control of the ship by losing the other one, this will only result in a sluggish ship prone to collisions as the game requires you to navigate in narrow areas or take a fast move to either left or right.
You are also granted the ability to jump in order to dodge those obstacles, there's also items to increase and reduce your size. Having a larger ship allows you to pick nearby items simultaneously while shrinking makes you smaller and grants you more space to move.

The room for error is quite small in this game, since a frontal collision will result in losing a life, although this is one of those games where you are sent to a checkpoint after dying, losing all lives means "Go all the way back to the beginning in one way or another" since the Game Over only allows you to start the stage or go back to the main menu.



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There's a videogame reviewer that is turning the shmup-world upside-down.
Sturmvogel Prime: Reviews for the New Generation.


No, it's not a Photoshop effect, the game throws you the upside-down thing against you. During your session, the game will suddenly throw a warning about a "Spatial Anomaly" (wrongly written as "ANOMOLY") and the screen will slowly make a roll, making you prone to disorientation and crashing your ship. If you survive the roll, you'll be granted a 50,000 point bonus and later 100,000 when it happens again. There's also an item called "Camera Flip" that does a similar effect, but it lasts for a few seconds and works to unlock an achievement the first time you pick it.



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That moment when the game asks you if you "need a hand".

After a while, you'll encounter a boss that you'll have to fight. This is when you'll have to learn to "rationalize" your ammunition since there's gonna be situations where you'll have to concentrate on dodging their attacks rather than collecting multipliers to reload, this situation can be seen during H4-ND51 boss fight when it begins to deploy obstacles on its second attack mode. There's also bosses which have to change their color so you can hit them, you can notice this since they will suddenly shift from red to blue, and this only happens in the Forest and Canyon stages, while the Industrial boss is vulnerable all the time.



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So, the boss was only a distraction, huh?

Defeating the boss doesn't mean the stage is over, in this game you can keep running in the level until you lose your last life, this is a great chance if you're looking to level up and, why not, break the "Global Best" score and become the best Lost Wing player on Earth. Good Luck out there.



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All of the features are EXP points required.

Experience Grinding is perhaps the worst part of the game, since the best vehicles require to reach levels 12 and 24 to unlock them, along with the stages and extra colors for your ship, Also, if you think the colors apply to all the ships, think again 'cos after unlocking a new ship, you have to unlock the alternate colors for it again. I know there's three ships, but the irony of this is that you'll end up unlocking all the achievements before making real progress in the game. I mean, unlocking each ship could be an achievement, but with 11 achievements (9 of 100 points and 2 of 50) it turns out to be another of those Gamerscore Milkers that I hate and I've heavily criticized all this time.


Graphically, the game aims to futurism and high technology, since we have energy lines in all the levels of the game, even if its a horror-like forest or the caverns of a mine/canyon, Your ship and the mechanical enemies are perhaps the ones with the most detailing, mostly the ARAK-N1D and L4Z3R-FACE as we have these large mechanical spider and worm-like bosses with energy points and panels detailing them.

Musically, Lost Wing's soundtrack is the oh-so-common use of electronic-techno-ambient soundtrack that for some reason feels like the spiritual successor of Kraftwerk. The title screen reminds me of the Tour de France album as some of the notes heard in the Main Menu sounds like the track "Tour de France (Etapé 2)", if you are a Kraftwerk fan you'll like the music of this game. The game also gives you the option of switching the soundtrack by pressing LB/RB.


LOST CURIOSITIES
- The name HWK II is an abreviation of "Hawk II".
- The ship name Kadilak is a pun on Cadillac.
- H4-ND51 is a pun on "Hands One".
- ARAK-N1D is a reference to "Arachnid".
- L4Z3R-FACE refers "Laser Face".
- For a boss with the word "FACE" on its name, L4Z3R-FACE is moe of a worm-shaped machine.
- H4-ND51 is the only boss that doesn't have a "Vulnerable color" mode
- The achievement name "Padawan" refers to the Jedi Apprentices in Star Wars.



Lost Wing has a lot of good ideas to keep you entertained, but blows it up with some bad instances (Spatial Anomaly and the experience grinding to unlock things). You might give this one a try, at least as a Gamerscore Milker is a little bit entertaining before you get all the achievements and ends up forgotten in your console's library (if its not uninstalled).
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