Picking Up Steam: Who’s That Flying?! (PC)
Back when my Steam account was young and the promise of affordable games was hard to resist I was always on the lookout for interesting and unique indie games, and as a result I found my way to the Youtube series “WTF Is…?” by TotalBiscuit. These first impression videos showcased recent Steam releases and lead to me acquiring a good deal of games after seeing them in an episode, but one episode stuck in my memory more than any other: “WTF Is… -WTF?”. The perfect twist of the series’s name with the abbreviation for the horizontal shooter Who’s That Flying?! was hard to forget, and even though I bought the game and briefly played it afterwards, the video stuck with me more than that short stint with the shooter. Now though, as I go back to my Steam backlog that TotalBiscuit no doubt contributed some entries to by his recommendations, it felt like a fitting tribute to play the game I most remember him featuring.
Who’s That Flying?!’s creative idea that caught my attention most all those years ago was the fact that while you play as a character, you are essentially invincible. The little flying superhero you play as is invulnerable to damage, meaning you can’t lose by way of death, but you’re not the thing in danger here. The cities of Earth are under attack and you are the guardian tasked with protecting them from the extraterrestrial threat, and if you let too many of the small black fanged creatures known as Ravagers slip by, they’ll destroy the city and force a level restart. There are other monsters in the skies that can knock you around to mess up your aim, but the little living mouths are the main threat.
Who’s That Flying?!’s plot will take you a to few different cities around the globe like New York City, Tokyo, and Moscow, but this story is actually told in retrospect as the Guardian of Earth is standing trial before the representatives of the other planets at the Galactic Council of Space Justice. Already the cocky hero has earned some ire by treating his job more like being a celebrity, but as he’s under scrutiny for his ability to protect the planet, the levels you play are essentially the evidence in the case meant to prove he can do his job when needed. The scenes between the Guardians try to add a bit of humor, many jokes are made at the expense of the easy target that is Uranus, but the jokes aren’t particularly creative and worn down through repetition. Funnily enough, the game’s title seems to not really tie to how the game presents the Guardian of Earth, his persona rather public to the point he does photo shoots and one of the game’s collectibles is a magazine providing profiles on him and all the other planet protectors.
While who exactly is flying is no mystery in this plot, what you face besides the Ravagers in each city is a more interesting bit of mystery as the game never breaks its core rule that only the tiniest foe is capable of doing harm. However, it can cook up creatures that can cause you problems anyway, one of the earliest ones being a large fanged worm that flies in the way of your shots so it can be harder to clear the swarms of Ravagers. Later down the line there are monsters that can ram you to briefly send you spinning around unable to fire and some foes fire slime that briefly incapacitates you, something that feels like it’s getting a little close to breaking the promise that you can’t be harmed, but you will eventually regain control and be able to get back in the fight and having some foes that present a more direct danger was ultimately wise. The number of ravagers and how they arrive on screen is iterated on quite a bit as you advance through the adventure, but your basic shot type fires pretty rapidly and you’re able to move pretty quickly to boot. It already feels fairly easy to go up and down repeatedly to take out Ravagers at many points already, so some complications help break you away from those more brainless moments of play.
There is a bit of room for strategy in Who’s That Flying?!, because as you take down enemies with your fairly standard arm cannon shots, you’ll build up combo energy. Once you’ve filled your energy meter one-third of the way you’ll be able to briefly activate turbo fire, the shots coming so quickly that it can make quick work of bigger foes or huge crowds. The next step up at two-thirds is a laser that will fire continuously forward, able to pierce through enemy lines so while it may not be as strong, it is much better at handling groups of enemies, especially since Ravagers never get an upgrade to their durability. The final reward for getting your meter full though is an enormous laser that will instantly wipe out anything it hits save for level bosses. Normally, when you wear down a foe like the big worms or slime-spitting mouths, they’ll become incapacitated and you need to press a button to go in and finish them with a direct physical attack. Normally, in a pinch, the Guardian of Earth can fly right into a Ravager to tear them apart, although the attack’s slowness means it’s more a desperate option than a reliable tool. These direct hits to large foes though not only wipe away the big threat, but they send out a small shockwave that harms nearby enemies as well.
What all these little options add up to is a way you can technically handle the incoming enemies with more thought than just lining up your hero so he’s shooting at the right thing, although the game’s main story levels won’t ask this of you too often. If you want to get a gold medal for protecting the city well or perfectly prevent any damage you might try and space out weapon activations, although if you sit on something like the turbo fire for too long and build up enough energy for the laser, it outright skips the turbo shot so waiting too long isn’t helpful. Letting one Ravager reach the city does wipe out your weapon energy entirely, but it’s not like you’re going to be wanting to let them by anyway so it doesn’t exactly alter your approach to attacking them. At the same time, those story levels often won’t be so hard that you need to hang onto weapon power, activating attacks as soon as you acquire them often enough to handle incoming threats, especially since you only lose meter energy when you use the big laser rather than the two steps before it. You can try and time the close up attacks on big foes or bosses to take out nearby Ravagers which is a bit more helpful, especially since some enemies spawn Ravagers if they’re left alone so they’ll be close by for the blast.
The challenge mode ends up being where smart use of your few unique attack methods might do a bit more than just giving you a brief burst of power. There are 24 challenges in total, each with their own score requirements for gold medals that earn you some of those magazine pages if acquired, but the range of ideas for challenges is a bit slim. For the most part, the game repurposes the same ideas but places them across the different city types. You’ll have a challenge type like Turbo where everything, including you, moves much faster, which not only seems to favor you more than the enemy, but each of the areas from the story is likely to have a Turbo challenge. There’s Score Target and Battle Royale challenges where you need to earn a high score or deal with technically tougher enemy arrangements than the main story’s version of the levels, but these essentially just require better play while the story can let you slip by and continue on so long as the city is not absolutely destroyed. Ultra Boss is a bit more interesting though. The game has a few bosses of varying quality, one other way you can lose being to not finish them off before the timer runs out on the fight although many bosses have periods where you can’t directly harm them. Ultra Boss fights usually give these bosses extra back-up or a variation on an attack like having an energy ball shot split into multiple spheres instead. Usually bosses are a decent capstone to story chapters and the time limit doesn’t feel like too much of a factor, but you definitely will rub up against it in the Ultra Boss challenges where smart shooting is actually valued much more. The Sudden Death challenges might be the best of the bunch though, these ending immediately if a single Ravager slips by. These are often short but require expert movement and weapon use, and while they’d be wearisome if the game comprised of such tight requirements all the time, these feel like more imaginative twists on regular play than most of the other challenges and make the mode more worthy of a look.
THE VERDICT: The city protection angle of Who’s That Flying?! makes for an interesting horizontal shooter but not a particularly deep one, because while taking out every little Ravager that comes your way is key to keeping the world safe, your own attacks are often a bit too good at repelling those simple foes. It’s not that tough to keep them at bay much of the time, but at least the larger foes and bosses do make you work a bit more and the challenges can sometimes muster up moments that make your weapons more interesting than the simple enjoyment of being temporarily stronger.
And so, I give Who’s That Flying?! for PC…
An OKAY rating. Who’s That Flying?! isn’t too easy to be enjoyed, in fact, it’s likely you won’t get through its levels without letting a handful of Ravagers through on the first attempt, but when you’re just shooting Ravagers the game has to make them easy enough pickings that perfecting them is possible. The bigger enemies that start appearing add in some variety since they can do more than just fly around, but the game also doesn’t mix the enemy types often enough so it can start feeling repetitive. Those Battle Royale challenges technically have the gimmick of mixing and matching enemies from other cities but that should have just been more common in the main adventure, although a greater breadth of foes in general could have helped instead. The power meter and working towards the turbo and laser shots does have the frequent pay off of a power trip to give some little energetic moments, but much of the time you aren’t forced to think much beyond shooting what’s closest or most dangerous. It doesn’t ever sink into such repetition that it gets dull, but its appeal does fade a bit because there isn’t too much going on in any one level. The intelligent power use sometimes necessary for gold medals in challenges does help, and even though the main adventure isn’t overly difficult, it is constantly kinetic because of that need to not let foes slip by.
I can say I now truly know the answer to WTF is… Who’s That Flying?!, and while I don’t think TotalBiscuit led me astray per se, I do feel the appeal of this simple horizontal shooter is the kind that can come on strong but fades once you’ve settled in with it for a bit. It’s not a particularly long play even if you go for the challenges and medals and yet that initial thrill can’t quite last throughout, but it is still mildly effective more often than not and sometimes whips out an enemy type or boss with more potential for disrupting the otherwise easy shooting.