2D shmups is a genre that refuses to die. Possibly because they tend to be pretty easy to make for small teams, and remain popular with gamers. Airstrife: Assault Of The Aviators is a new addition to the genre. Though instead of taking the usual sci-fi theme, it goes for more of a classic theme with various airplanes and airships. That ties it in more with classics like 1942 than Space Megaforce.
So today we’re going to take a look at this throwback 2D shooter and its features, and what it brings to the table. I must give a warning that I haven’t completed the game so I can’t really speak for all the available upgrades and later bosses. But I did get to the third area, so I have at least gotten a fair idea of what the game is like.
At its core, Airstrife is a pretty simple shooter. The screen autoscrolls and the goal is to avoid getting hit by either enemy fire or enemy ships and destroy as many of them as possible in the process. But in the end, the goal is to just survive long enough to get to the end of the level, at which point you get rewarded for your efforts.
It does come with a few unique twists, however. One core mechanic that you will rely a lot on is rolling. During a roll, you forfeit control of your plane but during the roll, you cannot be hit by enemy fire. It becomes key to surviving the onslaught since generally not being hit by fire is preferable to crashing and burning.
Certain enemy planes can also do a return maneuver from the bottom of the screen if you don’t destroy them before they reach it. This of course is a double-edged sword as on one hand, it gives another opportunity for money, but it also means you have to watch out for rear attacks. It adds a fair bit of difficulty to the game if you’re unable to destroy enemy planes fast enough.
Both you and the enemy planes take damage in sections. So your left wing, center, and right wing all have separate health indicators. And the same goes for enemy planes, meaning some of them can tank a fair amount of damage before going down.
If you can manage to avoid damage and picking up health pickups, you get a lot more money. So the more skilled you are, the better.
Missions
Airstrife has two mission modes. Campaign and Explore. The Campaign mode is where you progress the actual game, and each area you visit will have 5 chapters to play through. From my experience, about 2 of these chapters will have bosses in them. One miniboss and a final boss in the final chapter.
Explore is a little different. While the Explore missions don’t progress the game itself in any way, they give you access to Blueprints. Blueprints unlock additional weapons and aircraft for you to research.
Unlike a lot of classic arcade shooters, there is no actual leveling up of your plane as you play. The only things dropped from enemy planes are health pickups. Occasionally a special aircraft will drop ammo for you, but other than that there are no special pickups during the levels. Instead, you permanently upgrade your planes using blueprints and upgrades.
Research costs money but if you find yourself hurting for money, you can just replay an earlier level to get some more. Even if you’ve already found the Blueprint in each Explore level, you still get money for the enemies you destroy. In other words, Explore levels are for grinding, and Campaign levels are for progressing the game.
If you have any questions about how the game works, the Tutorial option will give you an overview of the mechanics. It’s recommended for new players to give this section a glance before going into either Explore or Campaign mode.
Research & Upgrade
Of course, it’s not only the Explore missions that grant you upgrades. Defeating a boss will give you some rewards in the form of new weapons and planes. When you do get new stuff, the first thing you should do is head into the Research menu.
This is where you’ll spend a lot of your off time between missions. Using the money you’ve earned from the missions, you can research planes, weapons, and parts. You’re going to have to do a lot of it to stay ahead in the game, as the difficulty increases a lot with each new area you visit.
Researching planes is pretty self-explanatory. Whenever you unlock a new plane, you will have to research it to add it to your roster. Each plane comes with its strengths and weaknesses. Some planes typically favor armor at the cost of either speed or weapon slots, while some smaller planes sacrifice armor in favor of speed and more weapon slots.
Researching weapons is also crucial. You will need stronger guns as you progress through the game, and this is where you’ll get them. You can get cannons, small missiles, and big missiles. Each weapon has various stats that affect how they function during gameplay, and we’ll take a look at those in a bit.
Researching parts is another crucial step. Your plane is fine vanilla, but modding it with upgrades allows you to truly unlock its full potential. You can upgrade four different plane parts, each affecting different stats. Armor increases your plane’s health, Airframe increases the number of weapon slots and maneuverability, Hardpoint adds extra weight so you can carry heavier weapons, and Engine will increase the speed.
The Hangar
Now, after doing some research, it’s time to customize your planes. The Hangar is where you do this. Each plane has distinct attributes that give a rough idea of its strengths and weaknesses.
Each plane also comes with three loadout slots. For each loadout, you’re limited by the plane’s stats in what weapons you can equip, so you need to pay close attention to the weight of each weapon, and the plane’s available weapon slots, and maximum weight. Once you’re happy with the loadouts, you’re pretty much good to go.
I generally found myself favoring smaller planes. Despite the increased armor, heavier planes lack a center cannon. I found that generally, fire rate trumps damage in the game. So the smaller planes definitely had a huge advantage being both speedier and able to shoot more bullets.
Another sort of neat but ultimately kinda useless feature is that you can swap between different plane upgrades in the hangar. This might be good if you want to intentionally level down your plane a bit. Though I’m a little unsure on why you would want to since generally, upgrades are beneficial. But the option is there if you need it.
Local Coop Action & Difficulty
The game supports up to four players, although only locally. I wasn’t able to test this due to the fact I live alone and I’m not exactly keen on asking a stranger during the pandemic. But it definitely seems like something I’d wanna try out at some point.
The game’s fairly difficult solo, even on Easy mode. Due to enemies having the same weapons as you, and being able to sometimes tank a fair amount of damage, the screen can often end up in complete chaos if you haven’t properly memorized the level.
You’ll die a lot in this game, and you’ll have to replay the entire level from the start if you die. Something that ends up being exceedingly frustrating when you’ve reached the boss and die because you’re unfamiliar with the pattern.
I can see the difficulty being mitigated somewhat when playing with friends. So if you have the option to play this with someone, I would recommend it. And hey, let me know how it goes.
Uneven Pixels
I have some nitpicks with the graphics. The pixel ratio is a bit off and a lot of the pixels look kinda distorted. The art direction feels very unpolished, with certain HUD elements being really pixelated and others being more detailed but the pixel ratio is the biggest problem since a majority of them aren’t square and kinda get stretched a lot.
I’m not sure what Airstrife’s internal resolution is, but this is a problem that could be fixed by setting the resolution to a higher one and then setting the game to fullscreen, rather than just upscaling the game’s internal resolution to a fullscreen mode.
All in all, the sprite work is good, but the overall feel of the graphics ends up being a bit messy since it seems the developer lacks an understanding of how retro graphics actually should look. It’s a common problem with retro games, one I saw a lot in Project Warlock as well.
Of course, none of this may actually matter to you. It’s more of a personal nitpick for me. Though it kinda bothers me how Airstrife lacks any graphical options. You can’t even change between fullscreen and window mode. I’ve also noticed that unless the game is focused when starting it up, the borderless window mode it uses ends up being off-center, something you can only fix by restarting the game.
You can’t skip the intro either, which to me seems kinda pointless. When I start the game I often just wanna get right into the action, and no matter how short the intro logo is, it’s still annoying to have to sit through it every time I start the game.
Controls
Now I normally don’t really go into the controls of a game in detail but this is an exception. Airstrife plays perfectly fine as long as you use a gamepad. Heck, the developer themselves recommends it, and for a good reason. YOU CANNOT REBIND CONTROLS!
This means that if you’re stuck with a keyboard only, you’re stuck with WASD for movement, Space for shooting, and fucking U, O, J, K, and L for the other keys. Like, sure, I could probably get used to that if I wanted to but WHY can’t I just rebind the keys how I want them?
Airstrife desperately needs more control options. Heck, it needs more options in general. You’re kinda stuck at the mercy of whatever the developers decided is best for you, which in this case really sucks if you don’t have an Xbox controller at hand.
Oh, yeah, that’s another thing I forgot to mention and something I won’t really blame the developer for. This game was made in Game Maker Studio and while Game Maker technically supports DirectInput, by default it is much easier to program for XInput. So unless you want to use a controller emulator you NEED an Xbox controller for this game.
A Fun And Intense Shooter
Despite my criticisms, there is no doubt that Airstrife: Assault Of The Aviators is a pretty good shooter. It has some gorgeous pixel art, with a lot of details and animations going on in the backgrounds of the levels that add to the experience. There’s even a fair amount of attention to detail, such as how the background moves at a different pace than the foreground objects to give an illusion of depth, and how the planes start smoking the more damage they take.
I’d also be remiss to mention the soundtrack and the sound effects. The music is pretty good and fits the game’s theme perfectly. The game even features a lot of ambient noise, which adds a lot of nice atmosphere to the game.
You also have a proper Scottish pilot voice that adds a lot of personality to the combat. Though I’m still a little confused about what “Charlie Foxtrot” means. And sometimes it was a little hard to tell what the voice was even saying.
It also has some really interesting mechanics that make it more than just another arcade ripoff. It feels like a fairly unique experience, and I can’t fault it for that. Really, my criticisms are more just quality-of-life improvements. The game itself is solid.
I did run into a couple of bugs, one that crashed the game. But it happened one time only and in the menu. And the only bug I encountered was that the helicopter rotor blade sound of the Area 2 boss kept looping after finishing the level.
So if this looks up your alley and you’re willing to strap in, put on the aviators and blast some metal, you can check out Airstrife: Assault Of The Aviators on Steam when it launches on February 26th.
