Full review of the PSVR version of retro-inspired, top-down shooter 1976 Back to Midway from Ivanovich Games.
I’ll start this review by saying that I’m old enough to remember Capcom’s classic arcade game 1942 and its various sequels, so for me 1976 Back to Midway instantly benefits from a certain nostalgic charm. Your mileage may vary depending on how much you remember, or don’t remember, the original arcade classics and how much fondness you have for the top-down shoot ‘em up genre as a whole.
Before I go on, I must say a big thanks to the developer, Ivanovich Games, for providing me with a review key for this game, but as always I guarantee that all opinions are my own.
In a clever twist, quite possibly to avoid various licensing issues, you’re based in an alternate reality 1976 where World War 2 didn’t turn out quite the same way, but thanks to the invention of a time machine you’re able to travel back to the 1940s to re-enact various historical air battles with an aim to change the course of history for the better.
The game and all missions are introduced by the enthusiastic Dr.Ivanovich, played with some great voice acting and some actually pretty decent dialogue, with a lot of surprisingly funny lines, particularly when he’s describing the way that history has changed due to your actions.
There are also some other funny touches, like the strangely familiar-looking time machine which people of a certain age might recognise from a certain 80s film, and which I suspect requires approximately 1.21 jigawatts of power to operate.
Gameplay primarily takes the form of a classic top-down shooter, working your way through a series of levels, each with a variety of missions or challenges to complete to earn stars. Within most levels you can also find a couple of so-called immersion zones. Triggering an immersion zone puts you into a first- or third-person viewpoint, either within the plane or just behind it, with its own little level and challenge to complete. At the end of the immersion zone you’re returned to the top-down view to continue where you left off.
I really like the way the immersion modes vary and mix up the gameplay. Sometimes you’re inside the plane, either flying it or sitting in the gunner’s seat, and other times you’ll be outside the plane viewing it from behind. You’ll also be flying different types of planes depending which immersion zone you’re in.
At the end of most levels you get to take on a larger boss plane which will require a lot of dodging and a lot of shooting before they satisfyingly explode in a shower of coins. The last level boss is particularly impressive, taking up almost the entire screen.
On the level select screen you’ll occasionally run into gateways where you’ll need to have earned a certain number of mission stars to unlock them and progress further. I like this kind of progression system as it provides a challenge, and a reason for completing the missions, but at the same time means you have a choice of which missions to attempt, as you don’t need every single star to continue. That means if you’re finding a particular mission too difficult, you can always try out some other missions to get the required stars, so you’re never likely to get completely stuck. The different missions help keep things fresh and give a nice variety of challenges to complete, for example you may be tasked with collecting a certain amount of coins during a level, or destroying a certain number of enemies.
Between levels you can visit the workshop and use collected coins to upgrade the power of your various guns and missiles, which is a nice touch as it gives a sense of progression. It could have been that it was very subtle but I didn’t notice a huge amount of difference in the upgrades and as you’re mostly just upgrading your existing weapons, rather than buying new ones, you’ll be seeing the same types of shooting throughout the game. You do pick up certain temporary power-ups during the levels which give a more substantial upgrade to your plane, for example a shield, or twin escort planes, but these types of power-ups can’t be purchased or added on in the workshop between levels. It would have been nice to be able to purchase a wider variety of weapons and perhaps choose your loadout before starting each level.
The game is presented from a traditional top-down view but with a 3D depth to the screen, not too dissimilar to watching a 3D movie at the cinema with various things flying past your head at certain points.
It’s quite hard to show the effect of the graphics in video footage but seeing the enemy planes flying in and out of the screen never gets old. I’ll never tire of seeing your own plane pull the classic loop-the-loop manoeuvre at the beginning of each level as it takes off from the aircraft carrier.
It dawned on me that the top-down view presented here is probably how many people who haven’t tried VR imagine VR to be like, e.g. a large screen in front of you with some depth effects, whereas the immersion mode displays what it’s actually like in more traditional VR games.
The graphics in the main top down view are great, with a lot of colour and some really nice water effects. The immersion mode graphics sometimes look a bit more basic, more in line with what we saw in Operation Warcade, but they still do the job fine. Some of the textures in your immediate surroundings, like the simulator you’re sitting in, are a bit rough and low-res, but after an initial glimpse you’re probably never going to be looking at those during the game so that can be forgiven.
The music, and audio on the whole, are also very well done, with some rousing tunes to spur you on and lots of very loud shots and explosions going on all around you. As mentioned earlier, the voice acting is decent although it’s basically just the one character. If there’s one complaint about the audio it’s that the mix is a bit strange when in the immersion mode. Everything suddenly becomes rather quiet, the music switches off and the sound of guns firing and explosions feels a bit muted. This may have been to make things more realistic but it loses a bit of the excitement in the process.
Control options offer the ability to select and use the Dualshock or a Move controller. The Move controller is nice for the immersion modes, as it gives you a visual representation of a joystick on the screen which follows your hand movements, however it’s not as good for controlling the top-down view. For the top-down view the Dualshock is the best bet, but conversely means you don’t get the joystick on screen in the immersion view. For the best of both worlds you’d have to swap controllers between the top-down and immersion views, but that would be a bit impractical.
Personally I stuck with the Dualshock for the majority of my playthrough. Control is simple, with the analogue stick moving the plane and almost every other face and trigger button acting as the fire button. For some reason you can’t control your plane using the d-pad, even though it’s not used for anything else. It would be nice to at least have the option to use either the stick or the d-pad.
One thing I did miss was any noticeable difference in the rate of fire when tapping the fire button vs holding it down. Traditionally in a lot of top-down shooters you can tap the fire button for a more rapid shot, or hold it down for a constant but slightly slower autofire. In 1976 holding the fire button seems to fire at the same rate as tapping it, so you generally find yourself just holding the button down throughout the level. Alternatively it could have been more interesting to have different weapons on different buttons, or at least guns on one button and missiles on another.
Playing through the 16 levels of the main story took me around 5-6 hours but that didn’t include completing every mission or collecting all the stars. The main gameplay loop is really enjoyable and I’ve already found myself going back to the various levels to try and collect more stars.
Overall I really, really enjoyed 1976. The different elements of the game all work together nicely and it’s clearly been put together with a certain passion for the old shooters and a bit of 80s nostalgia. I enjoyed the devs earlier game, Operation Warcade, in a similar way, as a tribute to old arcade shooters, but actually think I enjoyed 1976 even more as it felt a bit more polished on the whole. It’s available on the PS store for £15.99 which I think is a very reasonable price for the quality and quantity of game that you’re getting here, and if you enjoy the genre then I’d highly recommend picking it up.
Ivanovich Games are now working on 2076 Midway Multiverse which brings a similar formula to the side-scrolling space-based shoot ’em ups of days gone by, and if this game is anything to go by then I absolutely can’t wait to try that one out as well when it’s released later this year.
