“Do a Barrel Roll!”
Actually, calling this game a Flight action combat game would be like calling Crazy Taxi a driving sim. It’s an arcade shooter, you just happen to be controlling a jet.
The story is quite involved, and an integral part of the game….nah, who am I kidding? I’ll give you the story in a nutshell, since it could probably fit in one.
“Your mission, should you choose to accept it…”
The nation is on the verge of war with someone or another, in this case the ubiquitous Z-whatevers. You’re tasked with stopping them, and how successful you are at it determines whether you subdue them completely or just stop them ‘for now’. If you’re playing this game for the story, you need to re-evaluate your life. There are no major surprises here – if you’ve played any of the afterburner games before you know what to expect.
For those of you who’ve been living under a rock (Or maybe you’re too young to remember), you control a fighter jet with completely (and yet satisfyingly) unrealistic turning capabilities.
You fly into the level which is almost on rails (there’s a small amount of left/right level movement) shooting at enemies coming at you from in front, or occasionally from behind, while avoiding enemy fire. This can be achieved by just flying around, or performing a vomit inducting barrel roll – a move which can seem ineffective until you get the hang of the timing. Your arsenal is the standard unlimited machine gun – which satisfyingly requires you to lead the target rather than the bullets instantly hitting whatever you’re aiming at, as well as the ability to lock on to a group of enemies and fire homing missiles; this will be your bread and butter attack really – they’re finite but they recharge. The machine gun almost feels like it’s there for decoration. It does work for very close-up slower enemies, but beyond that forget it. Later on you can unlock auto-fire mode for the gun, you might as well leave it on.
Climax time – it’s like “Bullet Time” for jets. Apparently.
You also get a “Bullet-time” mechanic that slows time and lets you tag a whole mess of enemies. It can get you out of a tight spot but you’ll start to recognise the points in the level where the game expects you to use it if you want to maximise your score.
Control is fluid and responsive for the most part, with the occasional unintentional barrel-roll spoiling an otherwise fun arcade shooter. It’s no walk in the park though.
The Afterburner game-play was devised back in the days of arcade machine glory, where the aim of the game designer was to make you put more money in and keep playing, and not a lot has changed over the years. The game is hard and you get the defeated feeling often – the same feeling that makes a lot of people stop returning to an arcade game, the idea that you’re being cheated out of your credit by a deliberately difficult game.
For the home market, if the developers left the game this difficult they’d be shooting themselves in the foot, but then if they made it super easy it wouldn’t feel like After Burner. Rather than make the game easier, they have game-changing mods that will gradually unlock as you play – anything from completing the game a certain number of times, or shooting a certain number of enemies in a combo etc. These mods will give you extra credits, more lives per credit, bigger aiming window, etc. One of my personal favourites removes the smoke trails from enemy fire, which is a godsend when the screen gets super-busy. It’s enough to keep you playing beyond where you normally would in an arcade setting, because you don’t have that hopeless sense that you won’t get to see everything the game has to offer. And the levels are short, a couple of minutes each at most, with enough variation and branching to make each game a different experience.
It’s a pretty game, not that you’ll have much time to notice.
This makes it the perfect home version of an Arcade game. It retains all of the challenge of the original, but it gives you options without penalising you for it.
It’s a single-player game – the most interactivity you’ll get is a leader board to compare your score to your friends. Not that it matters, Afterburner doesn’t lend itself well to multiplayer. You’re playing against the game, and the rewards for better scores will have you playing against yourself as well.
Graphically, it feels like an AM2 game, if you’ve ever played their games, they all have a similar feel; Crazy Taxi, Daytona, Sega Rally, etc – they’re known for smooth polygons, clean lines, no nonsense levels, but super smooth and
Fly. Dodge. Aim. Shoot. Repeat.
fast moving. They’re crisp, colourful, and futuristic. Quite pretty too, nice reflections, and light effects, but most of the eye candy that you’ll notice is in the enemies, and the explosions, missiles, cloud, smoke, and fire.
At any rate you’ll be so busy trying to avoid enemy fire that the most attention you’ll give the level design itself will be a fleeting moment to admire the scenery as you crash into it.
The music is great – it’s not the star of the show, but it has high energy and makes you feel like you’re in the middle of a high-adrenaline situation – for those who want more of that Kenny Loggins feeling, you can choose the old Afterburner II soundtrack, which will have you riding into the Danger Zone, and brings back that old arcade feeling.
To sum it all up – it’s a perfect ‘in between’ game, for little snatches of game-play goodness in between getting home and having dinner, or having dinner and doing homework. It has a great reward mechanic that ensures that you’ll keep returning to it, but it is still an Arcade game at heart, and that’s why you won’t spend hours at a time playing it. Ultimately, it’ll kill a half hour or an hour no problem. Any more than that and you probably start to get tired of it. Sega still have that old-school magic though. It’s not for everyone, but if you love fast, twitchy game play, and especially if you’re a fan of the originals, you’ll be tripping down memory lane with your first barrel roll.
AFTER BURNER CLIMAX – GAME DETAIL PAGE
* Original Review written by David Alexandrou (Ohverture)
