AIRHEART is in an interesting place. As a diesel-punk game, it’s one of a surprisingly small amount of current media in that genre. Though I’d argue it’s in far better company among dual-stick shooters.
The game concerns Amelia (get it?), a young skyfisher in Granaria. Her father sacrificed a lot just to get her to the city as a child. And to honor his memory, she’s going to catch a sky whale. Catching said whale pretty much sets anyone that can find it up for life. I’m not going to lie; the game is more about the grind than an immersive story.
Controls are reasonably tight, overall. The problem in that is mostly due to the fact that your plane has varying degrees of responsiveness based on what parts you have equipped. You also can’t make hard loops or reverse by 180. You simply make a loop as tight as your body and wings allow. It’s, uh, also shockingly hard to hit things. I kinda found myself just giving stuff broadsides.
This is where things start to get a little muddled. Because it is a dual-stick shooter; your ability to aim and hit things is important. The problem is that most early guns have really small hitboxes. So you’d think a shotgun or machine gun would be best. You’d be wrong, because there are a lot of friendlies in the air. And if you hit them, that brings the police down on you.
There’s also the fact that there are fish up there. One or two shots from ANYBODY can kill a fish. Normally, you’d want to fly over and collect as many as you can, because they are money to you. And this is where the perfect storm comes together; they went the ecology route with the fish. If you collect/kill too many fish on a level, they have their reproduction hampered.
And if the population on a level dips below 95%, they can’t reproduce. EVER. This isn’t really a mechanic the game tells you about, outside a general, undefined way. It took the manual (which they updated to cover that stuff way after launch) telling me exactly where the hard line is to realize just how badly I screwed the bottom layers up. Not that I didn’t have help; whenever there’s a firefight of any sort, these fish will get caught in the middle of it. They’re like flying screamapillars.
Add to that the crafting system. It’s by no means the worst I’ve ever seen (that honor goes to one of my favorite PS1 games, oddly enough), but it strikes me as fairly unnecessary. It lets you make the things you can buy, like weapons and plane parts, for cheaper than you can buy them.
But, you need certain materials, so it genuinely seems to be more expedient just to buy what you need. There’s no guarantee that you’ll get more pipes or heavy casings in the amounts you need. Luckily, you can sell crafted items, so it’s at least a second avenue to getting what you want/need.
Each set of airplane parts has their own strengths and weaknesses. Almost every chassis has more heath than the base model, and most of them have special abilities, like a fish radar, as well as things that keep you alive longer, like temporary shields. You can mix and match parts, but I’m the kind of nutjob that prefers the full sets.
Other than that, most of the game is exactly as you’d expect. Every time you return home, you start from the first floor, as per roguelike conventions. You have a harpoon for larger fish, it’s aimed the same as your weapons. And, every set number of floors, there’s a boss.
The soundtrack is fairly pleasant. Also of note are the satisfying sounds of weaponsfire. Well, at least for most weapons (I’m looking at you, missiles). There’s nothing I can say that stands out, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing.
AIRHEART does a lot with its premise; it takes its own approach to dieselpunk. And it looks pretty good with everything turned up (though I couldn’t run it like that, in case you were wondering about some of the screenshots). This is where the game gets its top marks. That said, the HUD is fairly weak; and that does make it hard to follow certain things.
AIRHEART is a decent dual-stick shooter. That said, there’s something I couldn’t quite put my finger on keeping it from being a great game. That said, for $15, it might be worth a shot.
“While it might not hit every note spot on, AIRHEART might be just what you’re looking for.”
Final Score:
3.5/5
Title: AIRHEART
Platform: PC (reviewed), PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch
Genre: Action, Roguelike
Developer: Blindflug Studios AG
Publisher: Blindflug Studios AG
Release Date: July 24, 2018
*We were provided a copy of this game for review*
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