Thanks to Atari for the review code
Title: Lunar Lander Beyond
System: Steam (PC)
Price: $29.99
Release Date: 04/23/2024
Story
In this new take on the classic Lunar Lander arcade game, you work for the Pegasus Corporation, and are sent on a mission to scout the moon. But quickly things go awry, and the organization you work for just might be hiding a deep secret that could destabilize the entire universe…
Honestly, Lunar Lander Beyond’s story caught me by surprise. It isn’t hyper in-depth or will make you rethink life or anything, but considering how the original game really didn’t leave much room for a plot besides the most generic ideas you could come up with in your head, I was surprised at how Beyond slowly opened up to being a bit more risky with its story, connecting each world together in fun ways and making a narrative that at least provides enough material to make an interesting world.
Presentation
Right off the bat, the game goes for a very pleasing presentation. Bright, cartoony character designs, pleasant backgrounds, a simple HUD that gives you all you need as you play, this game really just gets straight to the action and looks real nice, and while the first world of the game seemed as if it would just take place in the typical boring space setting you’d expect from a title like this, I did appreciate how the later planets offer some variety to keep the game from just being a generic space background.
Everything animates well in the stages and the game runs pretty darn smooth on Steam Deck, save for one exception, and those are the in-game FMVs that pop up now and again, usually before key stages or during certain story scenes. For whatever reason on Steam Deck, they have a slight stutter to them and really kick up the fan, making me wonder if the Deck is trying to play them at max resolution and struggling to do so. Anything that wasn’t an FMV was flawless during my play sessions, and playing the game on my Dell laptop had the FMVs run normally, so hopefully this is just a Deck quirk that gets fixed soon, but luckily the FMVs are skippable anyway and the voiced dialogue scenes between stages are still fine on the Deck.
Speaking of the voices, there’s voice acting during these scenes along with during the stages, and the performances here are rather solid too. There isn’t a lot of it, but the full paragraphs are voiced, so there aren’t really any moments of a scene playing where the character just reads the first line; nope, the full dialogue scenes between stages are voiced and voiced well, along with any conversations that pop up as you play. Unfortunately I couldn’t gel with the music much at all, as while some tracks like the menu theme fit the ambience the devs were aiming for, several stage themes outright drove me insane due to their short loops and very repetitive instrumentation, and when the later worlds get real tough, you’re gonna be hearing the same songs a lot as you push your way through the game, and you’ll be real sick of this game’s soundtrack. Granted, they didn’t have anything to remix from Lunar Lander (it had no BGM whatsoever) but I wish the score was more exciting.
Gameplay
So, Lunar Lander! The original game always started as a game I’d try to play, I’d slowly get the hand of flying with that analog control, and still somehow mess up and crash hard into a crater no matter how hard I’d try to avoid such a fate. Of all of Atari’s earlier Arcade games, Lunar Lander was one of their toughest games for me to get into as a result of that tough learning curve, and Beyond keeps in line with that tradition, only with a lot more guidance to get adjusted to the curve. The main goal of each stage is really to just clear whatever objective they give you, and while landing at the end of the stage is usually the goal, there are plenty of side objectives and even completely different end goals thrown at you to keep the levels filled with variety, which I appreciate.
You have several different difficulties to choose from in Beyond, and these help for finding a playstyle that works best for you. From an easier difficulty that lets you retry stages and have pilots die over and over without penalty, to a perma-death mode that takes away pilots if you make a single fatal mistake with every obstacle being nastier to you in general, there are four options to pick from and more than enough ways to ramp up the challenge on yourself if you crave that classic, Arcade cruelty.
Luckily, the easier difficulties still have a good amount of challenge, as the game starts off with some pretty easy stages that get you accustomed to the Beetle lander before throwing you into tricky passages, timed escape sequences, rescue missions, and lots of other fun levels to play around with. The first world in its entirety is basically a tutorial for the control of the Lander, and once you get to Mars the gloves really come off and Beyond shows off those old school fangs. The Insanity mechanic gets introduced, which pretty much adds another thing to discourage running into walls and obstacles. See, if you run into most things slow enough, you’ll just take damage and not instantly die, but. even if you’re OK from a HP standpoint and manage to heal up, your stress meter will rise the more you hit things, which can prompt the pilot to start hallucinating to the point they see enemies as powerups and vice versa, along with spawning a bunch of random, bizarre obstacles to make your travels even more difficult.
Things get really weird when under full Insanity, and while the occasional pill can help reduce things to somewhat manageable levels, (albeit with a bunch of random stuff still showing up) if your stress meter is critical after clearing a stage, you might need to send that pilot to therapy for a period of time so they can get down to earth again. You do gain a bunch of pilots over the course of the adventure, so you’ll always have a backup on hand, but the stress mechanic still adds another layer of caution to be aware of when navigating the tricky passages and trying to make those landings, and on the highest difficulty, it can outright end your playthrough by making an already limited pool of pilots even more tough to deal with. Add in the fact each stage has a Bronze, Silver or Gold ranking system to it, and there’s a lot of value out of trying to master the controls and get better with the lander of your choice.
Yes, there’s more than one lander, though I still stuck with the Beetle during my play session. Some control better than others, including one that just outright lets you move freely with the left analog stick without a thruster. It definitely feels odd, but I appreciate it as a means of changing things up for people too intimidated by the usual Beetle, though there are some later ships that are more in line with that initial ship, with some challenging quirks to them. There are four ships in total, so really you just pick have to pick a favorite and stick with it once you unlock em all. To make things a bit more customizable, you can even discover hidden upgrade chips in select stages, allowing you to apply extra effects to your lander such as a shield, brake, and many more, so even if things are still tough with your preferred ship, you’ll probably find a chip that you’ll like to make things more manageable.
Really, I was just surprised by how comfortable the game was once I got into the swing of things, even as the difficulty ramped up. Stages often have checkpoints, so if you do die on an earlier difficulty, you can just keep retrying from there until you get it right, and considering several stages on the second and third worlds had me trying over and over again, with one World 2 stage taking me around two dozen tries? I was pleasantly surprised by how not frustrated I was, with the tougher checkpointy stages just giving me a “one more try” feeling.
That being said, some stages don’t have any checkpoints whatsoever, likely because in its entirety those stages are rather short once you know what to do, but I found these to be the most annoying to get sent back in, especially if it has a dialogue sequence that you’ll hear over and over and over again. Definitely wish some of these early-stage dialogue bits can be skipped outright upon continuing a level, as my insanity was starting to rise at points.
Conclusion
Going into Lunar Lander Beyond, I honestly didn’t have much expectations at all, since the original Lunar Lander was pretty darn tough to get into, and the little bit that reimagined it in Atari 50′s VCTR-SCTR seemed like the best that could be done with the general concept. But no, here we have a full fledged game with plenty of stages and challenges to complete, all with very fun, well designed levels that make great use of the lander mechanics. We have a game that does a better job of making the lander feel just weighty enough, than the original Arcade game it was based on, while still providing plenty of fun challenging tasks to complete for those who master the techniques of the Lander.
Add in multiple worlds, a story that ended up being a lot better than I assumed it would be, differing difficulty levels, and a bunch of fun upgrades/unlockables to discover, and you have yourself a very fun reimagining of Lunar Lander that ditches the notion of a Recharged approach, and more or less uses the basic idea and makes into a full fledged flight game, keeping the challenge while not making it too absurd thanks to the extra options you now have. And it somehow works brilliantly enough to be a fun romp worth checking out. That being said, I blazed through the first half of the game in just around 3 hours, and the further I got into my playthrough, the more it seemed like the higher difficulties and the optional desire to nab all the gold medals was really the only thing that would incentivize replay value.
This is a very polished and fun game, but for something based on arcade scorechaser, I was a little surprised to not see much of a focus on score for the ranking system, but more of a focus on time, and I wished there was a scoring element somewhere in here. Oh well, still a fun romp I think is worth a play however you decide to approach it, but I wish it had just a little more replay value to it.
I give Lunar Lander Beyond an 7 out of 10.