GoD Factory: Wingmen – Preview
There’s not really much of a story to tell with GoD Factory. It’s a multiplayer space shooter, which takes the full 360 action just a tad further. A game by Nine Dots.
The only space shooters I’ve played from this kind of perspective are top down side scrolling games. I dove straight into the experience.
The tutorial was lengthy, but that was necessary, there’s a lot to be told about the controls, as you’ll have to dodge enemy fire and zip past obstacles to make it to the other teams gunship.
The keyboard controls are your standard WASD setting. W speeds you up, tap it twice and you’ll fly even faster, keep it held down and it’ll give you a boost until your energy runs out. You’ll need it to close the gap between gunships. For careful maneuvering, you’ll need to slow down, this is done by tapping the s button. One tap will slow you down one notch, the second tap will let you slide along space in a very slow manner. A and D turns you left and right, in a more precise manner. The mouse is also moved to control movement. Sliding it up, will initiate a downward movement, pull back, and the vehicle will pull up. The Y axis can be reverted if the original setting isn’t to your liking. Left button lets you fire a machine turret, and right button fires of missiles.
Easy controls you say? Not quite, there’s more to this story. Space + w make you jump forward, Space + s will make you do a 180, helping you to elude an attacker. Double tap the spacebar to do a backward jump to avoid collisions, while Space + D, and Space + A are a 90 degree both right and left respectively. Holding space after any of these combinations will let you ‘glide’ this gives you the possibility to fire in a different manner than just straight forward.
To be honest, the controls and the visuals were dizzying. After a while you’ll lose sense of up and down and you’ll get lost in a maze of incoming fire, space debris and targets all lighting up your screen. And it can be rather hectic. Forget the slow paced easy going part of the tutorial and try to remember the controls as you are hurdling at the enemy ship to destroy the targets. It’ll take a lot out of you, and even when you can master the controls you’ll have had lots of practice. There are 6 ‘Components’ to destroy. You can go after then yourself to destroy them, and you’ll need a decent strategy to tackle the ship and defend you own. Going on the offense isn’t the only way to win a game, after every 3 minutes your mothership will fire of a laser, destroying 1 component of the enemy. So it is possible to play defensive and still hold back the attackers. A singleplayer campaign is being worked on and it’s really not a just a luxury, it’d be great to have a possibility to ‘master’ the spaceships before the game lets us blast through the starry void to destroy and capture the enemies ships.
Don’t like how your spaceship looks? Well the ship can be promoted by decking it out with upgrades to enhance its capabilities. There’s quite a lot to upgrade: Hull, cockpit, wings, thrusters, power core, shield generators, computer, W.C.U., device, add-on, main weapon, wing weapon 1 and wing weapon 2.
It’s good that there’s so much to upgrade, this will ensure that you’ll have plenty of time to overcome the opposition and learn the mastery of your plane.
It’s quite colorful and the gun turrets sound is quite decent. The explosions are up to par and it’s always a fun to see just how fast you can maneuver your plane to avoid a crash. On that subject, crashing into objects doesn’t to damage, a feat for which I’m quite thankful. I guess the learning curve over the plane is quite difficult that the added punishment over crashing would only add frustration.
Conclusion: a game which sends you hurdling through the void, and shoot down giant ships, flashy explosions, spaceships, a full 360 movement. Definitely worth a look, even if you just want the overcome the challenge of steering a spaceship.
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