A fun and easy to play shoot ‘em up, Under Defeat nevertheless offers a solid level of challenge for fans of the genre.
Whilst I enjoy them, I’m not all that familiar with the huge swathes of shoot ‘em ups, or shmups as the kids call them, but I’ve played a few in my rime. Raiden V and R-Type Final 2 are ones I’ve put some time into, as well as the bullet hell subgenre with the likes of Shinorubi. I’ve been having a go at Under Defeat recently, which is apparently a remake of a 2005 Japanese arcade game that I’d previously never heard of. It’s a lot of fun though, and a solid scrolling shooter for those that need something a little different.
I’ll mostly ignore the story, as Under Defeat does too. There’s a way between nations and you’re a part of that in your attack helicopter. There’s not much more than this really, so moving on. At a glance, this appears to be a fairly by-the-numbers shooter. It does have a neat twist in that your helicopter can pivot. Now, this isn’t the only game to do this by a long shot, but it does play into the manoeuvrability of choppers, and allows you to aim your shots somewhat in a 180 degree arc in front of you. If you release the first button, moving left and right will rotate you, whilst firing locks you into your current angle.
This is useful in some areas, as enemies will appear and move in awkward positions for your straight forward firing, so sometimes you’ll need to put yourself at risk and stop firing to reposition your guns. There are other benefits to releasing the attack button too, as you’ll charge up your option which will launch once you commence firing again. This is a time limited bonus attack that will change based on pick-ups. You can have a minigun which will shred through weaker foes, a cannon that fires high powered blasts in a single direction, and homing missiles which do as you expect. These have a cooldown, so thinking about when you charge and launch it can be important, especially when a boss is arriving.
Enemies are pretty varied, with opposing choppers and light tanks being easy to take out whilst only providing a moderate number of shots at you making up the bulk of what you’ll see. There are more heavily armed ground and air based enemies that will test your skills more with the sheer volume of attacks, many of which have delays and explosive effects that warrant additional focus. This isn’t a bullet hell game, but death will come easily when you’re being targeted by so many opponents.
Luckily you have your screen clearing bomb, which is pretty par for the course with games in this genre. You can pick up additional ones that are occasionally dropped, and you get three restocked each time you die, so you often have enough to protect yourself when things get a little too hairy.
Even with that, Under Defeat is still pretty hard. I’m no expert in the genre, but I was running out of lives and credits pretty quickly early on. Even setting the game to Easy mode and maxing out the life stock didn’t reduce the challenge a huge amount. Be prepared to see the Game Over screen quite frequently. There’s a practice mode, which is nice, so you can get to grips with a specific level before trying a full run again. You also have access to a number of different helicopters to choose from, each of which behave substantially differently, so there are ways to mitigate that difficulty once you find a setup you like and have practiced a little.
It looks really quite good and sounds great with a fantastic soundtrack that’s been arranged from the original release. You can play through both the original arcade version as well as this remake and some remix modes too, so there’s a solid comparison between past and present. The older version looked very small on my screen though, making it harder to make out what was most pressing for me to deal with. Things are a lot bigger and clearer in the newer mode, so I tended to stick with that. Everything runs very smoothly apart from a very odd moment when the game seems to freeze for a split second when you’re hit and die. I’m not sure if this is a design choice to inform the player when things are quite hectic so they don’t lose track, but I found it quite jarring.
Under Defeat is a very good shmup game that fans of the genre will lap up, and fans of the original will likely be very happy to see. With all the different modes and variety of helicopters to use, there’s plenty to enjoy here too, and it’s perfect for a quick blast if you have twenty minutes to spare. I’m going to keep chipping away at it and see if I can have a no credit run on Normal mode, but I expect I’ll be at it for some time!
Under Defeat is available now on Xbox, Playstation, Nintendo Switch, and PC.
