Game Reviews

Astro Boy Flight

Star onStar onStar halfStar offStar off
|
iOS
| Astro Boy Flight
Get
Astro Boy Flight
|
iOS
| Astro Boy Flight

Osamu Tezuka's Astro Boy is deeply beloved in its native Japan, but it's only ever achieved cult success here in the West.

I still remember playing and loving Astro Boy: Omega Factor for my Game Boy Advance a decade ago, an imaginative action game that successfully captured that niche appeal.

Sadly, Astro Boy Flight reflects the rather more recent, cynical exploitation of the brand seen in last year's Astro Boy Dash.

Run and gun

This time Animoca has ditched the endless runner and has bolted the Astro Boy property onto the 2D shoot-'em-up genre instead.

The results are similarly underwhelming, though. If you were designing a vertically scrolling shmup to introduce young kids to the core concepts, you might come up with Astro Boy Flight.

You probably wouldn't pack it with a cynical IAP system and suck out any semblance of nuance, though.

Early progress through Astro Boy Flight involves steadily scrubbing back and forth across the screen. That's all you need to do to cut a swathe through the uniform lines of robots that come your way.

Astro Boy's flight path is so restricted and his weapon spread so generous that erecting an impenetrable wall of laser death is a small matter.

Occasionally, a barrage of missiles will come your way, requiring evasion, but they're preceded by a Jetpack Joyride-style laser sighter to give you ample warning.

The other thing to watch out for is the occasional random boss encounter, which typically throws a single strong attack at you every now and then.

Bossy boots

The challenge is only ramped up by your enemies taking more hits to kill, and this requires you to plough your virtual currency into upgrading your main weapon - as well as into the little wingman robots that fly alongside you.

And here's where the game's heavy-handed IAP system comes in. Your wingman robots are on a cool down timer in-between bouts. You can pay to speed this up with the game's coins.

While you appear to get a constant stream of these coins from playing through the game, it turns out it's nowhere near enough to sustain your upgrade path once your initial allotment is depleted. Not without considerable grinding, or of course, an in-app purchase.

And given how repetitive, simplistic, and ultimately dull the gameplay is, even the most dedicated of Astro Boy nuts will be reluctant to plough that much time or money into such a pointless pursuit.

Astro Boy Flight

A beloved cult IP gets attributed to a dull and cynical 2D shoot-'em-up, which will leave fans and non-fans alike distinctly unmoved
Score
Jon Mundy
Jon Mundy
Jon is a consummate expert in adventure, action, and sports games. Which is just as well, as in real life he's timid, lazy, and unfit. It's amazing how these things even themselves out.