PSP Review: After Burner Black Falcon

Planet Moon Studios is a third-party developer that has taken the Sony PSP seriously as a platform for original content. Rather than port over scaled-down versions of existing console titles (a strategy used by other developers which has met with with mixed success), Planet Moon has instead focused on developing original content that takes advantage of the PSP’s specific strengths. Zombie shooter Infected was their first break-out hit on the system, and it provided proof that their unique strategy could pay off, by combining a fun single-player arcade experience with some groundbreaking multiplayer connectivity features. Black Falcon follows much the same formula (minus the zombies, of course) in that it offers a straight-up arcade shooter with some additional frills piled on. Do not expect epic plotlines or the geopolitical intrigue of the Ace Combat series here, folks. This is a back-to-basics, quarter-crunching arcade retro-fest, designed with short bursts of gameplay in mind. Judged against its arcade-inspired peers, Black Falcon holds its own admirably. Ultimately, though, whether or not it is worth the 39$ price tag will depend on how much of a fan you are of arcade twitch shooters.

Black Falcon looks pretty, but does it have the personality to match?

For the 10 or so people out there who have never played an Afterburner game, the formula goes like this: Black Falcon places you in a 3/4 camera view behind a jet fighter, which you must guide through a linear level while wasting airborne and ground-based enemies that come in waves from all directions. The game offers players limited motion within the demarcated path through the level, just enough room to dodge the blistering amount of misiles that foes will direct your way. The only choice you have in the matter is whether to proceed forward slowly or rapidly with the help of afterburner jets. In many respects, the game is closer in pedigree to 3-D SHMUPS like Space Harrier than it is to a flight sim. For example, the game rewards players with health packs and ammo refills for destroying all of a certain kind of jet on the screen at one time, in a combo kill. Just like in the arcades, you are granted 3 lives, which allow you to magically pick up where you left off in a given level. Despite being a throwback to simpler gaming conventions, these three lives are a blessing, because the game will often demand that you use all of them to pass the more challenging stages.

So how does it all come together? We found that Afterburner pulls off its arcade with a moderate degree of success, although issues with the implementation and with the on-rails shooting genre more generally keep it from attaining perfection. First, in terms of the specific shortcomings of the game, we found the controls to be somewhat less-than-perfect for picking off inbound fighters at a distance. The wild gyrations produced by the analogue thumbstick had us involved in more “spraying and praying” than we would have liked for a game that is meant to reward skillful reflexes. A generous amount of auto-aim rectifies the problem of oversteer, but this also detracts from the sense that skill, rather than blind luck, is necessary to beat the harder levels. Besides machine gun fire, the game supplies players with a limited supply of homing missiles and rockets, which seek out their appropriate targets automatically. The skill of the game essentially involves learning to do a number of things at once: fly straight, avoid incoming missiles, strafe with machine gun, and match missiles with their targets. Due to the on-rails aspects of the game, this all gets rather repetitive, but the small number of single player missions means that it is all over fairly quickly for players skilled enough to make it through all 24 levels.

The graphics, cutscenes and menu art are all quite well done, and they maintain the light-hearted feel of the game throughout. Levels are colorful and populated with nicely modelled aircraft, although things rarely slow down enough for players to enjoy them. The story, such as it is, moves along with the help of American Sunday-morning style cartoon clips that are uniformly well drawn and fun to watch.

In the end, we couldn’t help but enjoy our time with After Burner: Black Falcon. Planet Moon’s irreverent sense of humor shines through in almost all aspects of this game, from its over-the-top storyline to its “Mad Cow” multiplayer mode. Black Falcon hearkens back to the days when the loftiest goal of any video game was to take your quarter and make you smile.

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Things we didn’t like:

Final Score: 7.5/10