After Wave: Downfall Review

After Wave: Downfall is the latest game by developer 7 Raven Studios and publisher Totalconsole. This game is without a doubt a Shoot ‘em Up, but it does a handful of things to differentiate itself from its typically 2D outer space-based peers. The art style, camera angle, and location all feel unique. For some reason, I’m drawn to a lot of Shoot ‘em Up-style games – probably because they remind me of playing games in the arcade as a youth. Despite the obvious differences After Wave: Downfall displays from your typical Shoot ‘em Up, I didn’t hesitate to volunteer to review the game when the Tavern received a copy.

The story is pretty simple in Afer Wave: Downfall. To sum it up quickly there is an evil force, the Deathrix, that has overtaken the land. The Deathrix launch a strange purple meteor at the planet and this meteor corrupts the local wildlife causing them to go crazy. The Megacat (don’t ask me) calls upon a group of heroes to save the world. The game has six playable characters, although only three of them are available at the start. You earn upgrade points as you play and you can use these points to upgrade your characters and unlock the three additional characters. These heroes all operate boat-like vehicles, which is useful since the gameplay takes place in rivers and other bodies of water on the planet. I’m not quite sure why the land-based animals don’t need to be stopped as well, but we won’t worry about that. The translation from the game’s original language is not very well done, and there are quite a few grammatical errors, but I don’t play these types of games to get wrapped up in the story.  After Wave: Downfall features a story mode, arcade mode, and practice mode, all of which can be played solo or co-op. I primarily focused on the story mode, but I took a peek at the arcade mode and wrangled my girlfriend into playing a few levels of co-op with me.

7 Raven Studios has released quite a few games with easy achievement lists on Xbox. The achievement list in After Wave: Downfall is no different. I was able to unlock the full 1000 gamer score in less than an hour (woohoo!) and was met with minimal resistance. Don’t worry though, my gameplay did not end there, what kind of reviewer would I be if it did? While the game starts off relatively easy, it quickly ramps up in difficulty after the first two levels. Story mode has three difficulty settings: Easy, Medium, and Hard. When you first start the game, easy is the only one available and you will unlock the other two by beating the previous difficulty. You might be thinking to yourself that replaying the game three times sounds kind of boring, but the developers have added a slight twist to the difficulties. To complete Easy mode you only need to beat the first four levels. Medium adds three more levels, and Hard brings the total to ten. Beating each difficulty reveals another piece of the story. Getting to play new levels to close out each playthrough gives the game a nice amount of replayability; however, I think it would have been nice to have medium unlocked from the start, especially for more experienced players. 

After Wave: Downfall definitely provides a challenge for those looking. Like many Shoot ‘em Ups the gameplay in here can get pretty hectic. It doesn’t really reach Bullet Hell levels of insanity, but sometimes there are a lot of enemies, obstacles, and projectiles on screen at the same time. Instead of your typical top-down or side view, the game features a sort of 2.5D view. The game world is rendered in 3D, with cartoony, PS2-era visuals. This aesthetic works well though. You can move your boat around a flat plane on the water’s surface, but there is no movement on the z-axis, meaning that you cannot jump. I think this is a missed opportunity where they could have added an extra element to the gameplay. Fortunately, the heroes’ guns have a sort of homing feature where if an enemy is in the air and you are firing straight ahead, the bullets will rise up and hit them, sort of like how it worked way back in the original Doom when you couldn’t aim up or down, but your shots would still hit enemies higher or lower if lined up properly.

Perhaps it’s just the 2.5D layout and the fact that I haven’t really played a Shoot ‘em Up like this before, but I thought the button input layout was a little strange at first; however, after playing for a bit I quickly became accustomed to them. Holding the left trigger makes your ship move much slower allowing you to precisely navigate tricky obstacles; alternatively, holding the right trigger will cause your ship to move much faster, which is useful if you want to snag an item before it disappears off the bottom of the screen. I know this isn’t the first game to feature inputs like this, but I think they work very well here, and the level design and gameplay make use of them to a great extent. Each hero has their own set of attacks. The A button fires repeating projectiles and is the main attack – not needing any reloading or ammo replenishment. The part of the controls/gameplay that was slightly confusing was the three types of special attacks, and how they are charged. LB and RB each launch a stronger projectile and as far as I could tell this is charged up by collecting battery items that enemies drop upon defeat.

I tried the three starting characters, and their moves are vastly different – I felt like I had the most success with Thomas because he has the most starting health and I liked his attack arsenal the most, his basic attack is an incredibly useful homing projectile and his special attacks all seemed to pack a punch. The final special attack is activated by pressing X and this launches a large barrage of projectiles that obliterates anything on a third of the screen directly in front of you. It took me a while to notice, but there is a little HUD icon below your health bar that slowly fills up allowing you to use this powerful attack.

One more thing I should mention is the difference when playing solo and co-op. In solo when you die you are given the opportunity to repair your ship by spending five upgrade tokens (you usually get at least forty for beating a level). In co-op when one player dies they can respawn by pressing A before their countdown timer reaches zero. However, when you respawn you are only given one hit point. There are health pickups in the level that will heal one point of health, but they seem to be pretty scarce (more so in co-op I thought). Eventually, both players will be stuck in a respawn cycle, where you have to hit A as quickly as possible because if both players die then you have to start at the beginning of the level. I get that the game would be way too easy if you respawned with full health, but maybe half health would work better, and they could have at least allowed you the option to pay to repair your ships if you both die.

Conclusion

After Wave: Downfall will no doubt attract many achievement-hunting players, but Shoot ‘em Up enthusiasts looking for something new and different should also consider picking up the game. The gameplay is fast and fun, it has a unique aquatic setting and viewpoint, and it provides a great challenge to anyone willing to work their way through each of the difficulties.

This game was reviewed based on Xbox One review code, using an Xbox One console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.