The Digest: After Burner Climax is an exhilarating, intense Arcade game, perfect for those who like to keep on trying to increase their high scores through multiple playthroughs. Those looking for long lengths of games will definitely want to avoid this though, due to its incredibly short completion time.

THE FACT SHEET

RELEASE DATE: April 21st, 2010
PUBLISHER:Sega
DEVELOPER:Sega
ESRB RATING: “E10+” for Ages 10 and Up
GENRE: Flight Action

PRODUCT OVERVIEW:

An almost direct port of the 2006 coin-op arcade game of the same name, After Burner Climax rushes to Xbox Live Arcade remaining mostly untouched. Players take control of one of three fighter jets as they take to the skies in order to stop a nuclear threat facing the world in this fast paced, over the top, crazy shoot-em-up.

PRODUCT FEATURES:

• The classic arcade game, now in HD.
• Intense Air Combat
• Two Game Modes
• Online Leaderboards

Defining the true meaning of an Arcade game, After Burner Climax was originally released about four years ago to arcades across the world with three special setups, complete with moving cockpit-shaped seating that moved according to the game’s events. While the newly released Xbox Live Arcade version sadly doesn’t come with your own cockpit, it does bring much higher resolutions and online leaderboards. Your objective in After Burner Climax is to stop the threat of nuclear war that the Nation of Z is prepared. You have 48 hours to take the fight right right to the Nation of Z itself and stop this war before it ever has a chance to begin. Luckly, your 48 hours mission manages to translate into about… 10 minutes of actual gameplay.

Yep, this entire game will take about ten minutes to complete. If you’re one of the types that only likes to play through games once and only once, then this game will be a huge waste of money for you. You would be paying about $1 USD per minute of gameplay… and who would want to do that?

Once you play though it once, though, you’ll know this isn’t the type of game that you should only play though more than once. True to the coin-op Arcade game spirit, After Burner Climax is the type of game that will make you want to try and beat your high score over and over again. If you like using different characters in your single player games, or in this case, fighter jets, you also get a total of three fighter jets to try out, those being the F/A-18E Super Hornet, the F-15E Strike Eagle and the F-14D Super Tomcat. Each plane comes with four paint jobs, ranging from “Standard’, “Camouflage”, “Low Visibility” and “Special.” While the first three might actually be useful in a combat situation, the “Special” paint jobs are just for show, and are actually pretty cool to look at. The Super Tomcat gets an Xbox 360-style paint job, and is my personal favorite, while the Super Hornet and Strike Eagle get flame designs. After selecting your fighter jet, you’re shown a screen of the “rooms” in the game, which is basically a map of where you’ll be traveling, and can choose between the After Burner Climax soundtrack, or the After Burner 2 soundtrack. The whole selection process takes about ten seconds. Do you usually take your time in picking your options? Too bad, you get a twenty second time limit for doing so! It does keep the fast paced speed of the game, but a little more time would be nice.

When the game actually starts, the enemies start coming at you almost immediately. The gameplay itself is intense, relentless and ridiculously fun. You have two weapons at your disposal a machine gun and homing missiles. The mounted machine gun never overheats or runs out of ammo, but is extremely weak. Your missiles, on the other hand, are your best bet. The homing missiles kill most all of your enemies in a single hit, but you can run out of them! At any time, you can have fifty missiles, and they regenerate each second. With so many enemies on screen at once, you’ll have to try and conserve as many as you can. Until I finally realized to conserve missiles, I found myself shooting only one missile at a time, almost defenseless against the dozens of on-screen enemies.

The game does a fantastic job of making you feel just how fast your jet is, but the sensation is killed off when you die, as you take notice that your enemies move on the screen at the same pace when you don’t move at all as when you move at mach 5 speeds. It’s a bit of an annoyance, but once you’re back in combat, you’ll forget all about it keep on fighting. If you complete certain challenges during your time playing, ranging from seeing the game over screen once, to firing ten thousand missile throughout all your After Burner Climax playthroughs, you can unlock “EX Options,” which can either help you in the midst of combat, or put all the odds against you. Some of these options include autofiring of missiles when you lock on, to only having 1% of your armor, making you die in once hit. It’s a pretty cool option to have, and helps a ton when trying to get achievements, but don’t assume these special options will rise your score for leaderboard purposes, as any points earned in Arcade Mode won’t go on them.

If you want your score to be posted on leaderboards to show off and gloat to your friends, Score Attack mode is the way to go. Score Attack sets all your options, including any EX Options, to default, and you never have to use a “credit” to keep on playing. You have an infinite amount of lives, and your only real goal is to, as you might be able to tell by the name, get your score as high as possible. There’s no major differences in this mode besides that, and it’s only true purpose is the leaderboards, but if you don’t like “cheating” with the EX Options, and prefer to go though the entire game rather than wasting all your credits, this may also be the gametype for you. Throughout all of this, you have a man and a woman talking to you either about mission objectives, or making sly comments about your endeavors. When you try to avoid spotlights in a certain level, the woman says things like “I need some water” due to her being so nervous,” and later on, the man says things like “We need to be paid extra!” Some will hate it to death, while others will laugh while playing. No matter how you feel, it’s good to hear some actual character emotions rather than generic soldiers yelling at you constantly.

Conclusion:After Burner Climax is a breath of fresh air in the almost constant onslaught of military shooters attempting to be as realistic as possible. The crazy gameplay, the presentation, the great music, it all screams old school, arcade-y gameplay. True coin-op game fans should buy this in a heartbeat, and anyone looking for a great game to pick up at any time will find this to be their perfect match. On the other hand, the extremely short campaign and minimal secondary options will scare away people who assume this game will take a few hours to complete. Pick it up short spurts of fun, and not for long-winded gaming sessions.