Under Defeat is a beautiful top down shooter originally released as a NAOMI game in Japanese arcades.Under Defeat's setting is conventional military. War torn lands bristling with tanks, cannons, helicopters (your ship is a helicopter) Naval battleships and jet fighters. The game looks and plays like a cross between one of the old school 1942 shooters and Raiden 2, but in hyper-detailed glorious 3-D!

There is a virtual world of niggling visual detail and simulated physics at play. Enemies explode into flaming pieces that leave beautiful smoke trails and interact with the scenery. Helicopter spin into the ground before they explode, and those explosions can affect other enemies. Effects like trees being blown by explosions, and splashing puddles are commonplace. The enemy craft feature sharp textures, fine geometric detail and moving parts. The greatest feature is the constant 60 fps. in even the most chaotic of battle scenes. Even when the particle heavy, transparency heavy explosions rock the screen the framerate stays fairly stable. Graphically Under Defeat just barely edges out Ikaruga.

Aurally, the same cannot be said. Under Defeat has some wonderful ambient sounds, but its music is pure japanese arcade synth-Jazz. It's not grating, but it doesn't fit a specifically themed visually grand shooter like Under Defeat. Something featuring military drums and a men's choir would have been more fitting.

Much like the music, the gameplay is mostly standard. There is the gimmick of being able to rotate your helicopter 90 degrees. It adds a light sheen as opposed to another layer to the gameplay. Your main weapon is not upgradeable. You have to the ability to use support craft for a limited time, and you have a smart bomb. The support craft system actually adds an interesting twist as you must stop firing for a short time to activate it. In the boss battles strategic use of the support craft system is much more important than stockpiling smart bombs.

The game has tight controls and you craft has a small hit box, making the challenge a fair one. The playfield scroll is slow which doesn't really affect free games to download, but is aesthetically not to my liking. The enemy crafts track you craft with their shots, but you can count the number of times their shots present a ridiculous curtain of bullets.