The New Classics #38: Wing of Darkness

 

The Backstory: That one is a weird beast indeed. It’s the work of Production Exabilities, a developer that’s so utterly unknown that you cannot find a single piece of data about it on the internet. And when I say “the work”, I mean ‘THE work’, as WoD is the only game ever developed by (whatever is) Production Exabilities. Wing of Darkness totally flew under the radar (no pun intended), with only a handful of reviews on the internet and no Wikipedia page whatsoever. Now, is this the result of poor advertising and distribution, or is there a more sinister reason at work? 

 

 

The Game: We were off to a really good start when WoD offered me an uber-easy difficulty setting called “smooth sailing”, before ushering me in a gorgeous mountainous fighting arena after a beautiful skippable cutscene. This was actually the tutorial; and after a bit of fumbling with the controls, I cleared the whole thing without breaking a sweat. And then… a glitch occurred, and the screen went totally black while dialogue went on. (Wing of Darkness indeed, hahaha!) I waited a bit to see if it would get back to normal, but no luck — that’s a soft reset for ya, mate! 

 

 

Fortunately, the game had saved my progress, and I could proceed from the beginning of the first real mission. Gorgeous landscape again, but a hefty 50 targets to take down. I got rid of 49 of them… and then, the lock-on aiming suddenly stopped working. I don’t know if this was another glitch or just the way the game operates; one thing I know, though, is that I was royally pissed off.

 

 

A title with a stellar gameplay could have gotten away with this; but WoD’s gameplay is barely palatable. It’s a slower, clunkier version of Azur Lane’s gameplay, with more confusion added and all the fun sucked dry. The controls are unintuitive and unprecise, the physics are wobbly and unreliable; and 360-degree movement, which would be awesome with great controls and physics, only makes things more tedious and complicated.  

 

 

The Verdict: That was a very honest try, from a developer that obviously used all its resources doing so; but not matter how you slice it, Wing of Darkness is a broken, imperfect mess of a game with few redeeming qualities. I usually have some unhealthy fondness for such games; but being able to play is where I draw the line, and WoD crossed it with its weird glitches.