After Burner Climax (PSN/XBLA) Review

After Burner Climax is a fun and frantic game that doesn't last long, but it's a solid port of the arcade game.

If you've ever been in an arcade, then there's a good chance you've seen a game in the After Burner series. This latest game is Sega's frantic plane-shooting franchise is fun, fast and downright gorgeous, but a garbled story and rather bare-bones content kill much of the game's potential replayability.

Racking up Combos ensures you get a high score. But you knew that! Right?

The gameplay is rather simple, fly one of three real-life planes (F-14D Super Tomcat, F/A-18E Super Hornet and the F-15E Strike Eagle.) at breakneck speeds through a variety of pretty locations, all the while shooting down enemy fighters with missiles and your handy Vulcan Cannon. It's simple, fun and very arcade-like, but after a handful of plays the gameplay begins to feel stale. The lack of anything to do beyond the short single-player stages and leaderboards leaves you with a game that you'll likely be bored of within a week.

But there is a positive. The game does have superb presentation, with gorgeous HD graphics and some pretty cool audio. The game is fast and flashy, with almost no noticeable slowdown. The planes are all well design and the terrain, though it goes by really fast, is stunning to look at. The audio isn't as notable as the visuals, but they complement the game very well.

Boom! Pew! Zap!

Finally, the story. It's of the broken, unintelligible variety that many Sega-designed Arcade games seem to have. The fact that there's a story at all in a game like this seems redundant and unnecessary.

Overall, to those who are fans of the After Burner franchise or are just looking for a hectic arcade experience, I can recommend this to you. Everyone else... It's tough. Though the game is fun and beautiful, the lack of any replay value makes the game a little difficult to recommend. But the game effectively did what it set out to do, which is to give us a frantic arcade experience with fantastic visuals. You can get on Xbox Live Arcade or the Playstation Network for 800 Microsoft Points or $9.99. If it's your type of game, check it out.

- Kyle K.