Aaero: Complete Edition - Game of the Week
My Game of the Week is, of course, the fantastic Aaero, which will be making it’s way to Nintendo Switch this week!
Overview
Speed through stunning, stylised environments tracing ribbons of light, releasing the energy in the music. Battle strange enemies and fight epic boss battles all driven by an incredible licensed soundtrack.
Independent micro-studio ‘Mad Fellows’ brings you a unique and innovative game featuring music from Noisia, Flux Pavilion, Katy B, The Prototypes, Neosignal and many more.
A bit of background
Christmas has always been the perfect time to get a new Music based game, the kings of this category in the form of Guitar Hero and Rock Band have long gone and for a time DJ Hero rolled the roost but the novelty of physical instruments to play these types of games died out and we were left waiting for something fresh to reemerge.
Paul Norris and Dan Horbury were two of the developers who worked on DJ Hero, at the time working at the UK studio FreeStyle Games but both decided to leave and form their own new studio, Mad Fellows.
Their first game, Aaeero and what a game it is!
Gameplay
In short, you play as a small ship flying through a series of different stages as you try to stay on the ribbon and defend yourself against incoming enemies.
Seem simple? Well it’s far from it but it’s learn-able and it’s a progressive difficulty so it doesn’t throw you in right at the deep end. Early levels help you practice the bases of keeping to the ribbon at a good pace before introducing too many enemies, obstructions in your flight path and well-hidden secrets.
The key elements of this game are the ribbon in which you must try your best to trace throughout the level, battling enemies to survive by locking a shoot onto them and finding the hidden red lights (secrets).
Not enough of a challenge? Don’t worry there are boss battles littered throughout the game which do their best to test your defence and attack skills. I won’t say too much about the types of battles as they are a great surprise to be suddenly dropped into and it creates a real rush of excitement.
Performance
When you’ve seen footage of this game you may worry it’s going to struggle when it arrives on the Nintendo Switch but the port has been done so well it feels very smooth in docked mode. You’ll notice a few dropped frames in handheld but this actually helps to keep you playing rather than a slowdown of gameplay which would have felt odd.
Visually is where the change is most noticeable though as it seems they dropped the overall detail to help increase the performance, of which I have no issues with because it all adds to keeping that strong overall performance excepted from this brilliant game.
Platforms
As alluded to this game is available on all the major platforms with it arrives on the Nintendo Switch on the 24th December 2018, just in time for Christmas!
Final Thoughts
I’ve been a big fan of Aaero throughout its life on PC but always found that when I want to pick it up for a few games it’s not felt very natural to do so, as such it feels very at home on the Nintendo Switch where I can grab it out of my bag and play a few levels whenever I fancy.