{"id":16921,"date":"2017-10-02T00:01:35","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T00:01:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/?p=16921"},"modified":"2017-09-13T01:04:48","modified_gmt":"2017-09-13T01:04:48","slug":"windjammers-ps4-vita","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/02\/windjammers-ps4-vita\/","title":{"rendered":"Windjammers (PS4, Vita)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Windjammers was an arcade game from 1994.\u00a0 It was playable on NEO GEO arcade cabinets and on the home console of the same name.\u00a0 It was developed by the now defunct game company Data East, who made such classics as Burgertime, Karnov, Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninjas, and many more.\u00a0 And now you can download and play Windjammers as a cross-buy on your PS4 and Vita (reviewed on PS4 here).\u00a0 Windjammers is a sports game where you and an opponent toss flying throwing discs at each other, trying to score goals at the opposite end of the playfield.\u00a0 It\u2019s a mix of air hockey, Pong, and a bit of Super Dodge Ball.\u00a0 And it\u2019s all incredibly fun.<\/p>\n

To play, you pick from one of six characters from around the world.\u00a0 Each one has varying speed and power levels.\u00a0 When you throw the Fris\u2026er, I mean flying disc, you can hold up or down or even move the joystick in a quarter circle to make the disc go in different directions or even put some spin on it.\u00a0 If you can catch the disc and throw it again immediately, you\u2019ll be able to throw it super fast.\u00a0 You can also lob it in the air, but I don\u2019t find that move as useful.\u00a0 If you can catch the disc as it\u2019s flipping in the air, you can charge up a power move that\u2019ll make the disc fly erratically at blazing speeds.\u00a0 Behind you is the goal that you need to defend, as well as goals on the other end of the playfield for you to score in.\u00a0 Depending on the court, you can earn three or five points per goal, depending on where you landed the shot.\u00a0 And if you miss catching a disc in the air and it lands on the ground, the other player gets two points.\u00a0 Whoever makes it to a certain score first, wins.<\/p>\n

For the first time, you can play Windjammers online with others, but you\u2019ll need a PlayStation Plus account to do so.\u00a0 You can also choose Local Play, where you can try the arcade mode against the CPU in one of three difficulty settings.\u00a0 Or you can play against another local player or try the mini-games separately from the main game.\u00a0 The mini-games include Dog Distance, where you control a dog trying to catch the disc while avoiding obstacles on the beach, or a Disc Bowling game.<\/p>\n

Some may find the visuals and audio a bit dated, but I think it\u2019s charming.\u00a0 But then, I did grow up playing games like this.\u00a0 Although it would\u2019ve been nice if they added more characters and playfields, but if they wanted to just stick with what was in the original, I\u2019m fine with that, too.\u00a0 The learning curve is a bit steep, and while zipping and sliding around the field, I would sometimes miss the disc because I zigged when I should\u2019ve zagged.\u00a0 I wouldn\u2019t say the play control is bad, though, just unforgiving.\u00a0 It is an arcade game after all, and is very challenging, even on the Easy modes.\u00a0 But it\u2019s also incredibly fun, and I highly recommended to anyone who enjoys the classics as well as wacky sports video games.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Kid Factor:<\/strong><\/p>\n

Nothing too terribly violent here.\u00a0 You can smack players with the disc, but they\u2019ll just fall down for a second with stars above their heads and say \u201couch,\u201d but that\u2019s it.\u00a0 Reading skill is helpful for the menu texts and younger games may get frustrated at the high challenge level.\u00a0 Even though it\u2019s not part of the game, some of the trophies you can earn have the word \u201cDamn\u201d in the title or descriptions.\u00a0 \u00a0Windjammers is rated E for Everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Windjammers was an arcade game from 1994.\u00a0 It was playable on NEO GEO arcade cabinets and on the home console of the same name.\u00a0 It was developed by the now defunct game company Data East, who made such classics as Burgertime, Karnov, Joe & Mac: Caveman Ninjas, and many more.\u00a0 And now you can download […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":16914,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-16921","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-reviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16921","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16921"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16921\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16923,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16921\/revisions\/16923"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/16914"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16921"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16921"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gamerdad.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16921"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}