Game Review: Astro Flame: Starfighter

By Al

Players: 1
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, XBox

A shooter with mild RPG upgradable elements? Well, we might just have one here. Astro Flame: Starfighter is a new 3D shooter that recently dropped on consoles and mixes standard shooter gameplay with the ability to upgrade just about every piece of your ship. It features 15 levels, each with their own boss, of space shooting nonsense and we're going to dive into it and see if this is one to add to the collection!

This is where I usually talk story, and most shooters have at least the bare bones basics of one, but as far as I know there isn't any of that here. So I'll just jump right into gameplay. Astro Flame: Starfighter is a vertical shooter, but not truly vertical. Rather than a long, narrow playing field, the gameplay area occupies a standard widescreen field. Enemies come at you from above and you have a limited window in which to defeat them as the screen is constantly scrolling upwards. Get hit and you'll take damage, if your life bar totally depletes, it's game over. Well, that life bar ending the game is only true at the start as you eventually gain the ability to resurrect yourself (read: get lives), power up your main weapon, get missiles, get screen-clearing bombs, launch helper drones, throw up shields, and more. Once you've unlocked expendable special weapons enemies will start dropping power-ups that'll refill them. Also, unlike most other games in the genre, enemies will sometimes drop life-refilling items. Waiting for you at the end of every level is a boss. These bosses have their own life bar(s) and beating them clears the level.

I wish I could show you how slow this scene ran.

An early boss when I was weak af.

I mentioned that you can unlock various power-ups for your ship and this is done by collecting the shards that drop from defeated enemies. Each enemy drops a fair amount, and it only benefits you to go out of your way to get as many as you can. If you die in a level you get to keep half of the shards you found. Alternately if you kill every enemy in a level you get a 50% shard bonus. The upgrades get progressively more expensive the higher you level things up and I actually think it's impossible to even hurt certain bosses until you've powered up your main weapon. This means you can't challenge yourself by refusing to upgrade your ship. I'd never do that, but I'm sure there are challenge-seeking players who would try it. The game's difficulty ramps up so quickly though that it's a good idea to replay levels (perhaps to get perfect 100% kills) to power up more for the mid and later stages. I was at first annoyed by the fact that you're weak and fragile at the start of the game, and have to clear a level in just one life, but then I found that I enjoyed getting steadily stronger. It's a fun system that really changes up the standard shooter formula, and I'd like to see more games try it out.

Some of the levels look really cool.

Wavy bullet patterns are fun.

Graphics look great in this game for the most part. The game features 3D graphics, and while they're not the most impressive models you'll find out there, they're some of the best you'll find in shooters like this since the genre tends to favor performance and speed versus graphics. Levels are arguably more impressive than the ship and enemy models and have a lot of variety. There were some levels that had an impressive amount of depth to them, with foreground and background elements that all looked impressive. These sometimes made it hard to see enemies, but I was able to get by without too much trouble. Where things got weird is how the game just ran on the Nintendo Switch. I didn't experience much in the way of slowdown or framerate issues, but the game seemed to have a form of screen tearing that I've never really seen in a console game before. It was almost as if the game was having trouble fully rendering itself in real time and was resorting to distorting the image. It took me out the game more than once and was the biggest problem I had in my playthrough.

I don't have a lot to say about music since there were several times I thought a level had no music at all. It always turned out it did, but I never quite figured out if the stage music always had a long quiet opening, or if it really did start silent and took a while to kick in. Eventually the music always kicked in and I quickly realized that it wasn't very good at all. It wasn't exactly bad either, but I literally can't bring myself to say anything overly positive about it. It's rare that I find myself thinking that "it exists" is the best, and probably only, way to describe music in a game, but that's what I feel here. The music exists and you won't notice it, but it won't detract from the experience either. This is upsetting as shooters often feature great soundtracks and I was hoping this was to follow that trend. Alas, it was not to be.

This was a cool boss.

The final level.

Controls in any shooter should be tight and responsive and Astro Flame: Starfighter doesn't really live up to that ideal. The controls work for the most part, but they feel very sensitive and slippery. Most of the damage I took in the game was due to my ship stopping somewhere I didn't intend it to, or "sliding" a bit too much towards enemy fire. Also, thanks to all the available weapons, nearly every button is used for something in this game and this can get rather confusing in the heat of gameplay. There were times when I hit buttons randomly trying to select my screen-clearing bomb and wasted a couple other weapons in doing so. Weirdly enough you can also fly off the screen to the sides and above. I'm not sure if this is a weird programming bug, but it's weird to dodge far to the side and then just disappear off screen. All these things are quirks I guess players can get used to, but it's not something one should just accept. Lastly, is the fact that controls feel weirdly unresponsive on menus of all places. It's often said that bad controls are the hardest thing to describe unless you're experiencing them yourself, and the way I fought with every menu in this game is the epitome of that.

While there isn't a lot of replayability to be found in Astro Flame: Starfighter, I did find myself completing the game completely in one long sitting. If you had asked me when I started playing if I like the game I would've said I didn't, but after about an hour I couldn't put it down. I'm not sure if this was the completionist in me realizing that getting 100% wouldn't actually require a lot of work, or if the game has a special addictive quality that I can't put my finger on. Whatever it is I can definitely say that going back to levels that may have given you trouble before, and absolutely dominating them with a powered up ship, can be quite fun. Also, at just $9.99, I think that the game offers the right amount of entertainment for the price point.

Getting near perfect!

Was really going for it by the end.

I can't give Astro Flame: Starfighter a full recommendation with a clear conscience. It's not a very good game, and it doesn't run very well on the Switch, but I'd also be lying if I said I didn't have fun. If you're a fan of shooters, and want one where you can upgrade your ship in RPG-like fashion, then this is probably worth picking up. If you're just looking for a great game to pass the time, then maybe you can pass on this one. If you do pick it up though, turn off auto fire, we don't play like that in this house!

Check Out Astro Flame: Starfighter on The Nintendo Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/store/products/astro-flame-starfighter-switch/

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Story: D (I don't think there is one?)
Gameplay: C
Graphics: B-
Music/Sound: C-
Value: B-

Overall: C

Pros:
+ The idea of a scrolling shooter that has RPG style elements is a good one, and is implemented fairly well here.
+ Can be randomly addicting and beating the game 100% can be done in just a few hours.
+ Designs and graphics look great, even if they're not always running as well as they should.
+ There's a surprising amount of weapon variety to unlock.
+ The low price tag can make this a fun, casual purchase for shooter fans.

Cons:
- Has a lot of issues running on the Switch and I wonder if these performance issues are on other consoles.
- Music is all but non-existent and barely there most of the time.
- Requires players to redo levels several times to upgrade enough to take on the final levels.
- Some attacks just feel unfair, and the slippery controls don't help things.
- Is a fairly short game with no real reason to replay it once you've completed it.

A copy of this game was provided to us free-of-charge by the publisher for the purpose of this review. This did not affect our review in any way.

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