Thanks to ININ Games for the review code
Title: Air Twister
System: Xbox One
Price: $24.99
Release Date: 11/10/2023
Story
In this rail shooting adventure from industry veteran Yu Suzuki, you take control of Princess Arch, a warrior who must set out to free the captive guardians from the evil forces of the Vanguard, and win the war against darkness.
Being an arcade style game, there’s little plot during the game itself, which isn’t much of a surprise, though oddly enough there is a good chunk of descriptors on the world, backstory, characters and enemies all unlockable via the Adventure Map tree. Thus, I guess you can classify this game as one with a built-in lore book, though knowing the motives behind what’s going on won’t really enhance the shooting action in any way, and is more for fun.
Presentation
Originally on Apple Arcade, the main menus before starting up the game definitely feel like they were straight out of a mobile platform, with a layout fairly similar to other titles from that ecosystem. It transitioned over mostly fine, and I didn’t have much issues navigating these menus outside of the fact that it was a bit clunky.
Luckily the actual game looks pretty great, and while not a 4K showpiece, it did pop decently well on my display, with the 3D model quality heavily resembling that of a Dreamcast era game, or more aptly, stuff from the early Xbox days like Panzer Dragoon Orta. While Orta curbstomps this game visually when played on a Series X, Air Twister still looks pretty good and runs absolutely buttery on the system, with a lot of visual throwbacks to the Space Harrier that inspired it. The stages have background variety, and the enemy designs are pretty cool, if a bit uninspired.
The only part of the game that I felt looked a bit ugly were the side scrolling bonus stages, which are only accessible via a Challenges menu. These levels look really generic and the 3D assets do not look nearly as good when forced in a side view. On the bright side, the challenging score attack stage looks absolutely stunning, with you going through a pretty space tunnel and whatnot.
The soundtrack is easily the aspect to Air Twister I’ll probably deviate from the norm on, in that it comes off as incredibly bizarre to me. Space Harrier had some iconic, legendary FM songs that remain memorable to this day, along with excellent sound design in general, but Air Twister goes for an OST consisting entirely of tracks from a real band known as Valensia. Right from the start of the game, you’ll be hearing vocal themes, and they are really weird at first, feeling more out of place as you go into the actual game and hear them during the stages.
Yet oddly enough, the songs kinda grew on me after a while! Granted, I’m a weird person who doesn’t tend to like vocal music that isn’t Pop, but some of the songs have magnificent instrumentation, and one of the boss themes has an absolutely epic usage of vocals, making it an absolute energizer during the tricky fights it plays in. Some of these songs will repeat over the course of the game, but I generally liked the soundtrack, and never hated any of the songs in the end, even if they originally made me wonder if I was playing the wrong game.
Gameplay
Air Twister is a rail shooter not unlike its inspiration Space Harrier, and your main objective is to go through twelve stages, shooting down enemy forces and using the guardians to beat the bosses at the end of most of these levels.
Starting out, you have a basic weapon with a lock-on, and you can either use the lock-on by waiting until they target enemies, or mash the RT/A button to fire a slower, normal shot, Space Harrier Style. The rate of firing isn’t as fast as I expected it to be, so going from SH to this game may take a bit of getting used to, but eventually I got the hang of the lock-on’s pacing and did pretty well with my first few runs, with my first Arcade Mode attempt getting me to the final quarter of the game before I game overed.
Yep, game overing is a real risk here, just like a true arcade game. The Arcade Mode is a bonus mode with varying difficulties which takes you through the main game with no continues, but the main game mode does allow you to customize and gradually build up your skill to make the long romp a bit easier. See, you have a health bar, indicated by hearts on the top-left corner of the screen, and in the main mode these will last you a good while if you get the hang of dodging enemy fire and learning the patters, but even the mid-point of the game gets increasingly tricky, and soon enough you’ll be using one of your very limited continues. However, as you destroy formations in this main mode, you’ll collect stars from defeated enemies, and those are the key to making Air Twister’s gameplay loop a bit more in-depth.
The Adventure Map is easily the biggest side activity to do in the game, and that’s what all of the stars you collect through the main game and some bonus modes are meant for. This is essentially a gigantic skill tree, with newer branches opening up as you progress and reach a deeper level in the main game, while also nabbing other upgrades and items that are applied there. Those hearts I mentioned earlier? You can expand your max HP by a lot on this map, and what was originally a tricky game to finish becomes a lot easier with some extra hit points to play with.
This map is also where you can unlock extra weapons, which retain the basic lock-on and firing mechanics while also adding their own form of a charge shot, which just obliterates enemy waves and makes the game even easier. Add other benefits such as extra lock-on targets, accessories that can shield you from certain types of damage, and tons upon tons of clothing/music unlocks, and this map has quite a lot of content to unlock, all good reasons to keep at the main game until you finally clear that last hurdle, and it creates an addicting loop of binging as much as you can until you run out of continues, unlock some new upgrades, and try again to get just a bit further.
Of course, if you don’t wanna stick to the main mode, or prefer the vanilla, un-mapped difficulty, the aforementioned Arcade mode does wonders here, even if I find it unfortunate how this scorechasing mode lacks online leaderboards in any capacity. Along with Arcade Mode, there are other bonus modes to play around with such as a horizontal star-collecting minigame that’s pretty cruddy, a really challenging special stage set in space, a Boss Rush mode, assorted levels focused on clearing out waves of enemies in a time limit ala Galaga, and even a sequential number minigame that feels out of place without a touch screen. None of your upgrades/equipment is usable in these bonus modes, but I found them to be pretty fun to mess around with for a challenge, especially the Special Stage, which became my second favorite part of the entire game!
Conclusion
Air Twister was a delightful surprise to experience. Space Harrier didn’t really get a sequel that felt all that great, but here’s Air Twister providing a competent spiritual sequel better than most of the official attempts! With a good variety of weapons, a solid challenge, bizarre soundtrack, an assortment of fun modes for some good replay value, and plenty of unlockables via the Adventure Map, Air Twister is a captivating ride well worth a full clear.
However, I do feel that the lack of an online leaderboard hurts the game quite a bit for replay purposes, especially when most of the bonus modes are purely focused on scorechasing, yet you only can go after your best local score; not even a local leaderboard containing all of your attempts was included!
I’m glad the bonus content from the original Apple Arcade release made it over for that much needed replay value, but at the price Air Twister is, this experience is really one I can only recommend to the most diehard score chasers out there, who won’t really mind just having fun with a shorter game than they may be used to. Air Twister’s main game is short once you manage to nail down a run, but boy is it very sweet and well worth trying to challenge yourself with, with the optional modes/adventure map providing enough replay value to challenge yourself further.
I give Air Twister an 8 out of 10.