Originally published at: https://statelyplay.com/2018/11/26/afterburn-furious-angels-follow-up-on-intercept/
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.
Most appealing is the developer's mission statement.
- 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.
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.
