Air Fortress (1987)

Beat, including the 2nd quest. The concept of this game was cool; shoot em sequence to approach each fortress followed by Metroid like platformer shooter to destroy each and get out alive. The game was good in some ways but disappointing or worse in others. Starting with the story, which was dumb. The fortress is some kind of entity? Why are there suddenly 8? It was a typical NES story, being nothing more than than a vague premise to do some action with no development along the way. Could have been a lot better. I liked the idea of collecting resources in the shoot em up part for use in the exploration part, but the shoot em up action was painfully simple. There was only the basic 3 shot gun without any fancy weapons or powerups, which put it far behind the majority of shoot em ups. I found the gun awkward to use at long range because of the delay after shooting 3 shots. Close to the right edge of the screen it fired a constant stream so there was a bit of risk vs reward for positioning. The enemies were fairly standard and there were plenty of narrow areas to go for while risking a crash. This part of the game felt a little like a chore to acquire as much resources as possible for the on foot part. There really should have been other weapons, especially with limited ammo and the ability to switch between them (like Mega Man), more challenging combat, and at least a few bosses. I beat the 1st 4 stages at normal speed without difficulty. Then I slowed it down because it was tough not to crash while gathering resources. Slow mode helped inside the fortresses too as they became larger, more complex and with more dangerous enemies.

The biggest problem with the Metroid style parts was the time limit for getting out alive. It was tense and atmospheric, reminding me of the end of Super Metroid, but the amount of time given was incredibly unforgiving. I could not get out in time for stages 5 and 6. I ended up using a password to skip 5 then redoing part of 6 from a backup save state. I started using online maps and walkthrough, finding out it was absolutely imperative to clear enemies along the escape route before triggering the timer. There was pretty much no allowance for combat in the time limit. Once I started clearing the way I had no trouble getting out on time for the rest of the game. Without online maps though this game would be a huge pain to figure out the correct escape path. There was no in game map at all and some Mario style pipes did not lead back when entered from the other end. You really would have to map each stage by hand and use some trial and error to get out; not fun. Plus it got old always having to escape like this. They should have mixed it up and definitely included boss fights. The cores were all the same other than some variation in the other enemies present. I liked that enemies did not respawn, other than some of the humanoids. Some enemies dropped health or ammo but there was a distinct lack of reward for exploration; no permanent upgrades, no ammo for other weapons, not even objectives to complete like disabling a trap or finding a key etc. There were plenty of times where damage was unavoidable with enemies camping entrances or positioned so as to be impossible to hit from the front. It was a bit cheap but the hp pool was actually huge. A few times I used the recoil from shooting to propel me backwards through enemy fire. Most enemies were fairly easy to kill or avoid, even the homing turrets that could only be destroyed with bombs. There were 2 giant robots in the final stages that I guess could count as a final boss but they were trivial to defeat. It just took a while and would definitely prevent timely escape.

The 2nd quest added nothing new, other than a bit more difficulty, and the ending was nothing at all. It was not worth playing through again. The game was interesting but a bit of a slog and could have been so much better with more in depth and varied gameplay.

6.2/10