Astro Flame Starfighter Review | TheXboxHub

With games getting ever more complicated, it is sometimes nice to go back to your gaming roots and play something simple. 

What this preamble is leading up to is that of a new vertically scrolling shoot ‘em up from the Satur Entertainment and Sometimes You teams. That game is Astro Flame Starfighter, promising to take us back to the days of the classics with simple action and “stunning visual effects”; at least according to the Xbox store page. 

We’ll start off by checking out the presentation and those ‘stunning visual effects’. Honestly, unless I blinked and missed it, I have not been stunned once in the entirety of my play time with Astro Flame Starfighter. I mean, it looks okay, don’t get me wrong, but it also looks like almost every other vertically scrolling shoot ‘em up that has ever been produced. The backdrops to the levels all look nice enough, if not exactly like they are going to set the world on fire, and the enemy sprites are nicely detailed. What there is looks decent, there’s no debate, but if I did have one little niggle it is that the backdrops to the screens feel so busy at times that it is often hard to make out the bullets headed in your direction. That is a bit of a drawback in a fast paced shooting game…

In terms of the audio and the usual sounds are perfectly pleasant as well, with jolly tunes underlining the action alongside the obligatory siren noise when a boss appears. The sound of weapons firing and explosions all work well, and so Astro Flame Starfighter is perfectly adequate. But it never approaches “stunning”. It’s similar wording that I’d use for the story too – why are we attacking all these alien ships? Well, to be frank, I have no idea! We are in a spaceship, we take off, and then shoot anything that moves in front of us. 

So, let’s move on to the gameplay itself and see how that stacks up. And in an interesting move, there is one mechanic in Astro Flame Starfighter that is a bit different from most vertically scrolling shooters. That is found in the upgrade system. 

Normally, as you fly through the levels, enemy ships will drop upgrade tokens for your ship, increasing firepower, for instance. When you stop to think about it, it does seem somewhat silly to send things out to help the enemy, doesn’t it? Well, that is – kind of – fixed in Astro Flame Starfighter as defeated enemies drop green blobs of something. These blobs can be spent in the hangar between missions to upgrade different areas of your ship. 

The areas to upgrade are decent too, ranging from having extra lives through to extra armour and finally to upgraded weapons. You can even add additional weapons to your ship to help you beat all the enemies, and these do come in very helpful, believe me! In an interesting move, even after finishing Astro Flame Starfighter you’ll be left far from having a fully upgraded ship, so there is a certain amount of longevity for completionists built in. 

There are 15 levels to go at in Astro Flame Starfighter, and they all follow the standard “fly through a level, kill loads of minions, then get your head kicked in by a honking great boss” kind of template. 

Each level is also scored out of three stars based on the amount of enemies that you kill – three stars is 100% of enemies killed, while missing even one will see you knocked down to two stars. Just keep shooting is the idea! The rating of the level matters too, as we are able to have the amount of green blobs we collect increased if we score highly enough. On the flip, if we die in the middle of a level a penalty to the blobs is applied, so being careful is important. 

The actual play of the game is a lot of fun. The controls for moving the ship seem to work pretty well, and seeing that ship evolve as it is upgraded is a lot of fun. But, here are some annoyances. The one that really bugs me is that if you die and respawn, despite never having let go of the fire button, the ship will refuse to shoot until you release the fire button and then press it again. Frankly, that is deadly in a boss fight. 

Another thing that seems odd is that the difficulty of the levels don’t scale with your ship – going back to the first level with a ship from level 15 makes the whole thing trivial, as the enemies are dead even before they come on the screen, including the boss. It is pretty handy for achievement hunting and for not getting hit, mind! The rest of the achievements are just tied to progress through the game, and while it isn’t easy, grabbing everything is pretty straightforward. 

As a shoot ’em up, Astro Flame Starfighter does what it says on the tin. It is interesting enough, especially in regards the upgrade mechanic, whilst seeing your ship evolve in ways to suit your playstyle is pretty good fun. It may not set the world on fire, but there are a lot of worse ways to spend your cash. Basically, if you like a shooter, this could be right up your alley. 

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