I've been in a shmup mood lately. Last year I've played quite a few shmups, allowing myself a save at each level to keep my loadout. This year, I finally felt like I was becoming pretty good, often saving every few levels just to give myself a backup point in case I die and lose all my upgrades Gradius-style. So of course there had to have been a game that destroyed that notion.

Aero Blasters is pretty miserable. As expected of a good shmup, it looks and sounds fairly good, but everything else is just a bit off. The enemies never respond to your attacks, so it's hard to know what's invincible or not. Furthermore, your ship is SLOW, and combined with the fact that some levels inexplicably start having ice physics but for space, it becomes nearly impossible to maneuver. Imagine dodging bullet pattens when the lightest tap sends your ship for a walk in the park.

Power-up system is fairly reasonable: P icons power up your main gun, while every other icon switches your sub-weapon. You die - you lose everything. You also have an infinite bomb at your disposal at all times: just hold a button for a second or two, and it'll clear all bullets and do minimal damage to enemies. It recharges pretty fast, too, and you will NEED it at the final level, which combines "ice physics" with moving walls that also move along with the camera, enemies that I'm pretty sure can't die, and a flickery boss.

As for the writing of this review the graph of grades for this game on Backloggd looks like a middle finger, which is fitting, but which I will have to skew a bit.