Sometimes when you pick up a game, you can tell something is going to be wrong with it after just a few moments of playing. That's precisely the feeling I had after just a minute or two in the tutorial forAfter Burner: Climax on iOS. It wasn't necessarily because anything is wrong with Climax, which was originally released in arcades in 2006 and has since made it to Xbox Live Arcade and PlayStation Network, but because playing it on iOS means abandoning the physical controls found in all of those other versions. In their absence, you're left with an inferior version of a game that also happens to be a complete hassle to play.
Climax is a relatively standard, on-rails, combat flight sim game; choose one of three jets and you're immediately thrown into the thick of things, shooting down enemy aircraft (and occasionally ground-based enemies) with either a machine gun or homing missiles. A run through Arcade mode can be completed in about 10 or 15 minutes, or you can choose to quickly play an individual stage, making it a nice fit for iOS in at least one regard. There are lots of achievements to unlock, and many of them provide you with extra options to customize the experience -- more armor, improved weapons, easier aiming, and so on -- that can help to mix things up.
That's a welcome option, because whether you're playing Arcade mode or Score Attack, there isn't a lot of variety to be had, even with the branching paths and secret stages that allow one round to be a bit different than the one before it. As with most games of this sort, enemies come in the same patterns each time you play; the only thing that changes is how quickly you shoot them down.
Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem. Pre-defined waves allow you to focus on improving your score. But as I spent most of my time fighting the controls rather than that, facing identical waves of enemies over and over again seemed less than appealing to me. And although I did eventually get a better handle on the controls than I expected I'd be able to while playing the tutorial, they are still an absolute mess.
I initially tried out the touchscreen controls, which have you aiming with a virtual joystick, altering speed with a slider in the upper right corner, and firing with buttons in the bottom right corner. Aiming with this setup is a tremendous hassle, as is performing combat rolls. Changing speeds while playing is also less than ideal because it requires you to take your fingers off the fire buttons. An alternative setup allows you to control your speed by tilting your iOS device forward or backward, though I found this difficult to use effectively because of inadvertent speed changes that occurred whenever I returned to holding my iPad in a comfortable position.
Climax is a relatively standard, on-rails, combat flight sim game; choose one of three jets and you're immediately thrown into the thick of things, shooting down enemy aircraft (and occasionally ground-based enemies) with either a machine gun or homing missiles. A run through Arcade mode can be completed in about 10 or 15 minutes, or you can choose to quickly play an individual stage, making it a nice fit for iOS in at least one regard. There are lots of achievements to unlock, and many of them provide you with extra options to customize the experience -- more armor, improved weapons, easier aiming, and so on -- that can help to mix things up.
That's a welcome option, because whether you're playing Arcade mode or Score Attack, there isn't a lot of variety to be had, even with the branching paths and secret stages that allow one round to be a bit different than the one before it. As with most games of this sort, enemies come in the same patterns each time you play; the only thing that changes is how quickly you shoot them down.
Ordinarily this wouldn't be a problem. Pre-defined waves allow you to focus on improving your score. But as I spent most of my time fighting the controls rather than that, facing identical waves of enemies over and over again seemed less than appealing to me. And although I did eventually get a better handle on the controls than I expected I'd be able to while playing the tutorial, they are still an absolute mess.
I initially tried out the touchscreen controls, which have you aiming with a virtual joystick, altering speed with a slider in the upper right corner, and firing with buttons in the bottom right corner. Aiming with this setup is a tremendous hassle, as is performing combat rolls. Changing speeds while playing is also less than ideal because it requires you to take your fingers off the fire buttons. An alternative setup allows you to control your speed by tilting your iOS device forward or backward, though I found this difficult to use effectively because of inadvertent speed changes that occurred whenever I returned to holding my iPad in a comfortable position.
After making it through Arcade mode with the first of these control schemes, I turned to the accelerometer-based one that still has you firing and changing speeds with the same on-screen controls, but moving and aiming by tilting the device. Rolls were even harder to pull off like this, and aiming was an absolute crapshoot -- any success hitting enemies felt more like sheer luck than any skill on my part, particularly when it came to using the machine gun (which was also a chore to aim with any consistency using the virtual joystick). Making matter worse was the way the game frequently lost track of the neutral position I'd set for the accelerometer; I'd be playing and suddenly find myself ramming into the side of a mountain and losing a life while holding my iPad in the same spot that had me flying straight ahead just a minute earlier.
Whether using the accelerometer or virtual controls, I found the most effectively strategy was simply swinging the cursor around the screen and mashing the missile button to take down everything I locked onto. It wasn't a particularly elegant way of going about things, but your default allotment of 50 missiles (which refill over time) was enough that I was able to do this without constantly running out.
But really, it wasn't until I started using the aforementioned options unlocked by earning achievements that I felt more like I did playing the game with a controller. In particular, the option to increase the size of the cursor (making it significantly easier to lock on to enemies) made targeting enemies a cinch, although things like this, auto firing the machine gun or missiles, increasing your armor, and downgrading enemy attacks all swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, as everything becomes too easy. Suddenly shooting down a very high percentage of targets is all but guaranteed provided you can move the cursor back and forth and mash the fire button, and while this makes for a fun change in pace, it doesn't feel like a fun way to play the game for long.
Making matters worse are all the rough edges. Climax's visuals are far from mind-blowing on consoles, but they look fairly nice. Here they're not quite as good, and though I wouldn't call it a bad-looking game, the technical issues are hard to look past. At times you'll see enemies flying right through mountains that would kill you if you were to do the same -- except for when the game takes control of your jet at the end of each stage, at which point it will sometimes fly you through a mountain as if it weren't even there.
Load times can stretch on for a long time, too, though what's far worse is the lag. It's sporadic, and most often comes in between stages, mitigating the problems that it can cause, but that makes it no less annoying to see. Lag has, however, sprung up in the midst of playing, most noticeably on one particular stage set in the clouds that is all but unplayable almost every time I play it. Were it not for the missiles being homing, I'd have been lucky to get even a single kill -- it gets that choppy. And this was happening to me on a third-gen iPad, making its presence all the more inexplicable.
Climax itself is far from a bad game; it's simply a game that doesn't lend itself to being played without a physical controller of some sort. With controls that can be so incredibly frustrating at times, I find it hard to recommend picking up here, particularly when it can be downloaded on consoles (albeit for more than three times the price as on the App Store). If you're looking for a shooter on iOS, Namco's Sky Gamblers has a much better reputation. If you'd a prefer a shooter that really feels at home on a touchscreen, Cave's assortment of shoot-em-ups work quite well, but they come with a price tag to match.
Whether using the accelerometer or virtual controls, I found the most effectively strategy was simply swinging the cursor around the screen and mashing the missile button to take down everything I locked onto. It wasn't a particularly elegant way of going about things, but your default allotment of 50 missiles (which refill over time) was enough that I was able to do this without constantly running out.
But really, it wasn't until I started using the aforementioned options unlocked by earning achievements that I felt more like I did playing the game with a controller. In particular, the option to increase the size of the cursor (making it significantly easier to lock on to enemies) made targeting enemies a cinch, although things like this, auto firing the machine gun or missiles, increasing your armor, and downgrading enemy attacks all swing the pendulum too far in the opposite direction, as everything becomes too easy. Suddenly shooting down a very high percentage of targets is all but guaranteed provided you can move the cursor back and forth and mash the fire button, and while this makes for a fun change in pace, it doesn't feel like a fun way to play the game for long.
Making matters worse are all the rough edges. Climax's visuals are far from mind-blowing on consoles, but they look fairly nice. Here they're not quite as good, and though I wouldn't call it a bad-looking game, the technical issues are hard to look past. At times you'll see enemies flying right through mountains that would kill you if you were to do the same -- except for when the game takes control of your jet at the end of each stage, at which point it will sometimes fly you through a mountain as if it weren't even there.
Load times can stretch on for a long time, too, though what's far worse is the lag. It's sporadic, and most often comes in between stages, mitigating the problems that it can cause, but that makes it no less annoying to see. Lag has, however, sprung up in the midst of playing, most noticeably on one particular stage set in the clouds that is all but unplayable almost every time I play it. Were it not for the missiles being homing, I'd have been lucky to get even a single kill -- it gets that choppy. And this was happening to me on a third-gen iPad, making its presence all the more inexplicable.
Climax itself is far from a bad game; it's simply a game that doesn't lend itself to being played without a physical controller of some sort. With controls that can be so incredibly frustrating at times, I find it hard to recommend picking up here, particularly when it can be downloaded on consoles (albeit for more than three times the price as on the App Store). If you're looking for a shooter on iOS, Namco's Sky Gamblers has a much better reputation. If you'd a prefer a shooter that really feels at home on a touchscreen, Cave's assortment of shoot-em-ups work quite well, but they come with a price tag to match.
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