Game:

Gynoug (1991)

Duration: 51:40

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Wings of Wor as it was called in the US release is a side-scrolling shoot'em up for the Sega Genesis / Mega Drive. In Europe and Japan it was called Gynoug. An interesting bit of trivia is that this game was made by the same company that made Cho Aniki - the most homoerotic shoot'em up ever.

this game is far less weird than Cho Aniki, but the art direction of Wings of Wor is still both great and strange at the same time. however, first things first, what is the game about... you are Wor and your planet is being invaded by mutants. people on your planet are winged and master of nature and so are you. since so many of your brethren failed, you set out to finish the job.

you fly horizontally from left to right and start out with an already pretty powerful main weapon. it can be upgraded to a bigger spread and more damaging power and there are also different firing modes that can be activated by certain powerups. you can switch between a forward facing spread shot, a horizontal shot that also shoots slightly above and below you and one that fires diagonally in both directions. additionally, there are special attacks which you gain by pickung up scrolls with letters on them. there are plenty such as a forward shooting lightning, bombs that drop on the ground and follow the terrain, an angel that shoots lightning down, a shield... in my opinion there are too many secondary weapons and they are never truly needed. however, good use of those special weapons often makes it easier if you bother with them.

the gameplay is pretty standard 16-bit shooting goodness. each stage has a mini-boss and a final boss, the enemy waves relentlessly flood the screen and on higher difficulties you lack the firepower to kill all of them so you're forced to evade... a lot. in the Japanese version, default difficulty was normal and there was no easy mode. for Europe and the US, an easy mode setting was added and made the default difficulty. unless this is your first shoot'em up ever, do yourself a favor and set it to at least normal or even high difficulty. otherwise it'll be way too easy. hyper difficulty, in my opinion, is slightly too difficult to be enjoyable, but it is perfect for people who like to sink their teeth into one game and try to master it. it is not super hard - you do get enough lives - but i hate it if enemies have a bazillion health so you can't kill them all. in that sense i also dislike games that do exactly that in hard mode: just bump up the health so it'll be harder. yea, right. boring!! Wings of Wor does it almost right, however. enemies throw so many bullets at you that you stop noticing that enemies have so much health.

Wings of Wor looks pretty impressive. there are lots of enemies and bullets on screen at any time, the bosses are large and there are a couple of distortion effects in the background in some stages. in spite of the limited color palette, the graphics are colorful and never repetitive. what i do find lacking, though, is that bosses don't go down in a satisfactory way - especially the last one. it just turns grey. the sound is phantastic! i love the music. there's nothing to complain about here. there are even multiple tracks per stage.

this is an absolutely solid shoot'em up. not generic, not boring, but also not very innovating. of course not every game can re-innovate the genre so i don't see that as a big deal. i highly recommend this game to anyone interested in shoot'em ups.

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