After Wave: Downfall Review

After Wave: Downfall is an arcade shooter recently released for all consoles. The game has developed by a small team and has a fifteen-dollar price. After Wave: Downfall has shortcomings in some areas that are understandable, but some weaknesses seem could have been easily fixed. For example, the story is explained in form of lame texts, while the developer could have used some simple comic strip illustrations to improve narration. Of course, the story is just an excuse to start and continue the game and it is not particularly attractive. It’s about a Megacat who is the protector of the earth and calls his forces to fight a galactic danger. The special forces of this cat are the teenagers who go to war with the hostile forces on the rivers with their small war boats!

After all this, another drawback of the game is its unclear identity. The gameplay is not easy. The game has three difficulties from easy to hard. To see all the stages, you have to repeat them several times. You also have to collect points to upgrade your characters’ abilities, which also requires repeating stages. In short, even a core gamer will have some trouble finishing the game. But despite the brutality of the gameplay, the graphics we see are cartoonish with anime characters, apparently intended for a young and casual audience. This challenging game mixed with a cartoonish visual style and a cyberpunk logo makes a huge confusion for the audience.

Apart from what is said, there is no problem with the main gameplay itself. You have several different characters at your disposal to choose from. The characters each have abilities that can be upgraded. You must control one of them on the surface of the rivers and deal with waves of aliens and mutant animals. These regular enemies and especially the mini and final bosses are diverse and bring you exciting battles.
Apart from the story mode, the game has arcade, practice, and extra modes. Each one changes the conditions and rules of the game, although the gameplay or the stages will not change. However, these modes add some content and value to the game.

Fortunately, the game can be played locally by two players. Our experience was good in co-op mode, but if you play in co-op, you will probably lose your characters among the fire and bullets on the screen. This game has busy battles; besides escaping from enemy bullets, you must dodge obstacles. You also need to collect the items you get by eliminating enemies. Therefore, it may be a bit messy to play co-op in the beginning, but overall this mode is one of the positive features of the game.

The game artistically, as we said, has contradictions. Other than that, the game is very narrow in terms of music and sounds. It means the music tracks are limited and some things have no sound. The graphics reminded us of the Nintendo 64 eras. Cartoon effects are good, but old 3D models with simple textures cannot be eye-catching. Despite these simple graphics, we have seen frame drops in some busy scenes on the Nintendo Switch version we played. Of course, this frame drop is not that bad to cause serious disturbance in gameplay.

In verdict, we don’t consider After Wave: Downfall a bad game, but it could be much better. If you can accept the limitations of an indie game developer, this title is going to be fun for you.

The review code was provided by the publisher