I’m not really a shmup guy. I mean, I dig so much about the genre, but my atrophied synaptic responses would make Bell 101 owners think they were living in the fast lane. That is, until I played Morfeo’s Furious Angels. A mouse-based frisson of physics-heavy turning, burning and gunning. A papercraft aesthetic, accommodating responsiveness and simple controls coalesced to form one of 2017’s top games. Play it if you haven’t. A convert’s testament.
Turns out, we’re getting a follow-up, and deliciously soon.
AFTERBURN, offering no prizes for inspiration, is Morfeo’s continued pursuit of immediacy and simplicity. Trading out the isometrics for chase-cam, AFTERBURN — hence written without the exuberant capitalisation — is all about up close and personal dogfighting.
We’ve had some interesting and rather successful efforts in recent memory that hinge on a similar premise, with the rather excellent Sky Rogue a close stablemate. But Afterburn looks to pip even that one at the post for getting straight to brass tacks.
Billed promisingly as Your daily dose of air combat, Afterburn appears to be returning to Furious Angels’ short, sharp session mindset. The online leaderboard will return, as will the daily wave concept.
- Several aircrafts to unlock. From fighter jets to flying tanks.
- Easy to pick up. All you need is the mouse or a single stick with two buttons.
- Quick to get into action. NO deep story or cutscenes to suffer trough, just dogfights.
- Quick installation. Minimum requirements but vibrant visuals.
- Arcade action. Leaderboards and daily waves.
Most appealing is the developer’s mission statement.
As you can probably tell from this and my previous game, Furious Angels, I like flying things. I also like to make arcade-like games that are easy to pick up and gets you right into action with just a few keystrokes.
It is also hard to find a flight sim where dogfights are as fun as watching a Su-35 doing a cobra or watching the movie Stealth.
And that is what I’m trying to do with AFTERBURN: super quick arcade air combat. I hope you will enjoy it as much as I do.
Furious Angels is still one of my favourite games to simply control. The response time, the weight and inertia; it just feels so finely tuned. How much of that is helped by the peripheral experience of the game’s isometric viewpoint, I cannot say. The transition by Afterburn to a more conventional chase-came dogfighter has me slightly worried that it won’t have quite the same level of slip and slide. But, given the return of Furious Angels’ two-button control scheme — left-click to fire, right-click to boost — I’ve an inkling Afterburn might offer the same tonic in a different bottle.
Ready to Kenny Loggins.
No word as yet to release date or Mac support, but going by Furious Angels, there’s a high possibility.
No prizes for inspiration, indeed. I like how the devs mission statement doesn’t even mention Afterburner as inspiration for the game. Maybe they’re worried about a trademark infringement lawsuit? Even Atari was able to come up with a different and wonderfully cheesy name for it’s version of the arcade flight sim for the Lynx. It was called Blue Lightning. It was the raddest game I had in the 80s, especially for a kid who loved going to Blue Angels air shows at El Toro Air Station and could recite the entire script of Top Gun from memory. I think I still have the betamax Top Gun cassette tape somewhere.
Thanks for the heads up on Furious Angels. Super cheap right now and very neat little thing.
The name shears two letters shy of a potential C&D, or some sort of infringement. If there’s an alternative, I’d love a continuation of the Furious Angels name. Just wanting to feel that same sense of fluidity in the new one.
Yeah, great game! Good value. Very much enjoy logging in to see what the daily wave offers up.
I’m #9 on the leaderboard right now! xD
Awesome, man! I’ll log in later this eve and try to crack the top daily twenty.
I think I might have taken a wrong turn somewhere
No no, Rob Dougan is the last starfighter. You’re on the right path.
Wow, just tried mouse and keyboard instead of a controller for the first time, and it’s a whole new ballgame.
Man, just mouse…it’s so good. So, so good. And when you mention it to people, there’s a high chance of scoffing!
Dev even suggests playing solely with the mouse, tuning the game around it. IIRC, gamepad was a fan request.
For every game, it seems, there is one person who was born to play that game and perhaps no other. There is a guy for this one who within an hour of the day switching over will post scores in excess of 250k, with videos showing how he does it. Feh.
It’s true. I look at those scoreboards and wonder what kind of amphetamine abuse is behind that sort of top rung prowess. But as long as I can still log in and bomb around, long may our tweaker reign.
Hell yeah, bitch.
Not my highest score ever, but probably the only time I’ll ever be at #1…however fleetingly.
Incredible, mate!