Right now, I’m sitting with Under Defeat HD nestled eagerly in my Xbox 360’s disc drive and I’m asking myself “what the hell are you doing in there?” I’ll explain.
Under Defeat is a vertical-scrolling, arcade shoot-em-up where you control one of a handful of different helicopters, each with different performances and abilities. It was a game that was originally on the Dreamcast, and was clearly very popular for it to have had a high definition update. However, it’s not the first popular game to have made the jump from the Dreamcast to the current generation of consoles. Jet Set Radio made a similar move, albeit using digital distribution and not discs.
I wouldn’t normally chastise a game for being on a disc, but in this case I really feel like I need to make an exception. The main reason for this is that there’s just not enough in Under Defeat HD to warrant it being on a disc; not nearly enough. All you get is effectively one game mode split into four: the ‘New Order’ game mode, the ‘Arcade’ game mode and a practise mode for both of those, where you can replay any level as much as you like. New Order and Arcade are almost identical however, only differing in that the latter only uses about a quarter of the screen width of the former – they’re otherwise the same game experience.
And that’s it, unless you’re looking for a challenge. That’s one area that Under Defeat certainly doesn’t fall short. In fact, you’d better hope you’re looking for a challenge because it’s so difficult at times, it can start to get annoying. You’d be forgiven for thinking that preventing an area on your helicopter that’s about half the size of a pinhead from being hit would be easy. Holy fuck, is it tough! For that, blame the waves of enemies drowning the screen with bullets. It’s not even like Dark Souls in that, even though it’s tough, you can get through it if you’re smart; it’s just bloody unfair.
Even on the lowest difficulty with the starting lives bumped up to the maximum amount you’re allowed, you’d still need to be the lovechild of Ace Rimmer and Starscream to be able to get through the game’s meagre 10 levels (20 if you count Arcade mode’s 10 near-identical levels). I can’t see why you’d want to though, even if you were a fan of it on the Dreamcast. If Arcade mode – the mode that’s reputedly just like the original iteration – is anything to go by, nothing has really been added in this HD update that could really make it worth your while.
Nostalgia is the only thing that could make you want to buy this game; I’d imagine the only other type of person who’d buy it is someone who doesn’t like games or money. Take my advice: if you want to play a great, nostalgia-inducing shooter that’s innovative, reasonably priced and available to you right this very second, go play Ikaruga.
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.