Crisis Wing treads on ground so well worn that it feels like a sequel.
That said, Crisis Wing, now out on Switch, PC, PS4, 5, and Xbox One isn’t a sequel at all; it’s just a shmup. A whimsical name for the tough-as-nails genre where a single space ship -you- is pitted against an almost endless horde of enemy ships, or aliens, or insects, or innocent animals, or really whatever happens to be on hand.
A few of the most famous games in this genre are almost as old as gaming itself and include: Raiden, R-Type Delta, Gradius, and technically even Galaga. The problem is that, after years of stellar titles, there’s little room left for improvement. Notwithstanding going 3D (Star Fox), shmups have remained pretty much the same for longer than I’ve been alive. So what does Crisis Wing do to revitalize a genre that’s best games are all old enough to vote? Well not much, really. Crisis Wing does the whole scroll and shoot thing admirably. Waves upon waves of…. idk enemies or something, come across the screen and sort of dink out little orbs that aim to kill your spaceship. Even one hit is a loss of a ship. Three ships and you have to use a “credit” to reset the level. All is going according to shmup formula. There are weapon upgrades, a button that shoots a screen-clearing bomb, weirdly phallic bosses at the end of each level, and a much better than expected soundtrack. Basic shmup stuff. Technically speaking it’s a tightly made game: the ship feels agile but not too fast; the hitbox is tough to get used to but not unfair; the difficulty curve is fairly chill but the most difficult sections are suitably challenging. Shmup.
And that’s why it feels more like a sequel than a new IP- Crisis Wing isn’t doing anything different than the other games in its genre. It immediately reaches the limit of who it will appeal to: “Pros”. Guys who have been playing these games since they were eight. The guy who would go through stacks of quarters memorizing a tricky boss sequence in the back corner of the arcade. The speedrunners and 1 CC demons (1 CC means single credit clear. The term stems from being able to beat the whole game without inserting another quarter into the cabinet. It’s become shorthand for mastery of a particular game in the genre). Crisis Wing was clearly made for those guys.
It comes down to what a pro will see compared to a casual player. A shmup pro tends to see each game as its own puzzle. Meant to be sussed out over multiple runs. Practiced. Perfected. The formula is more important than the overall uniqueness of any given title. Here Crisis Wing succeeds: it’s a fair and well-balanced game that lends itself to the brutal precision the genre is famous for.
Everything can be learned with practice. Enemies are never popping out of the blue to randomly snipe the ship. The route is pretty much the same every time, and it’s up to the player to adapt to it. It’s fair in the sense that it plays by the rules longtime fans expect it to follow. Pro players, based on general research on the YouTube, Twitch, and Steam communities around shmups, see this as a standout new entry. All the things they’re looking for in a new game can be found here.
Crisis Wing’s issue for casual players is that there’s nothing new, original, or exciting for those not already initiated into the cult of shmup.
Take the art direction as the biggest sign that there’s a divide between the pro and casual. The very things pro players will enjoy about this game’s visual design are what will make casuals never want to play it.
The pixel art is simplistic to the point of being generic. The enemy ships, well actually maybe they were robots? Or, like, xeno alien stuff? I was never really able to tell, and that’s the problem. The art had no life to it; nothing sets the enemies apart from any other enemy in any other game; there’s no theme. But what they are is clear and easy targets. Plus, the bullets they shoot at the player move in clear patterns and are brightly colored.
So while they alleviated fears over being able to discern what’s on screen, something pros love, they ended up making a generic sci-fi mess that casuals will yawn at
This extends to the backgrounds of each stage. Endless scrolls over uninspired sci-fi expanse. First Stage- Generic Space. Second Stage- Generic mega ship. Third Stage- Generic factory/ city planet? Couldn’t really tell, honestly. Final Stage- slightly misty space chasm, I guess.
There is nothing going on back there. Which I guess was chill back when a game’s storage was limited to about the size of a .jpg. But in 2020, when this first came out on Steam, it feels less like a “retro” choice and more like a lazy one.
Crisis Wing totally fails to set itself apart, and unless I had already beaten every great shmup re-released on modern consoles this year (and there are a hell of a lot of those) I couldn’t see myself going out of my way to pick this one.
Now I’ve been more than harsh here so I’ll say something nice. Kickass soundtrack. Every song was a synthy glow stick of 60 bpm rocket fuel that pushed me through the game. Pro or casual- these songs are a major highlight.
So for pros: if you love shmupping for the sake of shmupping, if learning the correct path through a bullet-hell is your jam, if countless deaths are worth it for those sweet moments of flow state that come with precise practice- then this game is for you.
For casuals: If you’re still giggling at shmup- then give this a pass.
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