Review: After Burner Climax (360/PS3).

Originally released in the arcades back in 2006, Sega’s After Burner Climax was the fourth game in the popular After Burner aerial combat series originally designed by Sega legend Yu Suzuki with his AM2 team.

Powered by Sega’s Lindbergh hardware and featuring an awesome servo-powered moving chair in its deluxe variation, Climax proved popular with fans and casual players alike. Since then fans have cried out for a home port and now 4 years on it’s here, available for download on both Xbox Live Arcade and the Playstation Network for 800MS points and £7.99 respectively.

The original After Burner (1987) became popular thanks to its fast and furious gameplay and at its core After Burner Climax is no different; fly your fighter at breakneck speed and take down the enemy waves with your guns and missiles before they turn you and your chosen plane into an expensive firework.

You fly as a member of the Brave Fangs Aero Team (part of the G.H.O.S.T squadron from Sega’s popular Lindbergh/Wii lightgun shooter Ghost Squad) with instructions to take down the rebels of the sky and preventing them from causing a nuclear inferno. Pretty generic stuff but with a game of this type we shouldn’t exactly expect an engaging narrative.

The F14 Tomcat from the original After Burner has been upgraded F14D Super Tomcat for Climax and in addition to this iconic fighter the player may also choose from an additional two jets; the F/A-18 E Super Hornet and the F-15E Strike Eagle.

Once you choose your fighter you can also choose from 4 different paint schemes although I’ve yet to actually notice if these make any performance difference; they seem more eye candy than anything else.

Control wise everything is simple and straight forward with a button each for your guns and missiles, the triggers control your planes speed whilst the left stick takes care of your fighters movement. If these are not to your liking there’s a variety of other configs available in the options menu.

Your fighters guns are used to take down enemies at close range with missiles intended for longer range targets. Much like Rez, you move a targeting reticule over enemies to ‘lock on’ and then release your missiles to take destroy them. Missiles are limited to fifty but do gradually replenish (at least in the standard game settings). The key difference though is you need to hit the missile button for each enemy you have targeted unlike Rez’s take them all down hail of fire.

As you shoot down enemies you fill your ‘Climax gauge’ and once full you can activate ‘Climax Mode’ by pressing the right collar button. During Climax mode your targeting reticule increases substantially in size and can be used to easily target multiple enemies.

At the end of the, erm, Climax, your fighter automatically launches missiles and takes down all of the targeted enemies. Climax mode literally only lasts about a second or so but in a game this fast that’s more than enough time to target several enemies and potentially save your skin or help to rack up a huge combo.

The legendary barrel roll from After Burner is of course present here and is activated by quickly moving the stick from left to right. The move is easy to pull off although perhaps possibly too easy; I often found I was executing barrel rolls when I did not want to and this caused my untimely demise many times, much to my frustration.

Whether this is down to my own style of play or related to the sensitivity of the analogue sticks I don’t know but I certainly don’t recall having this issue with the arcade variant.

Graphically After Burner Climax is rather gorgeous and Sega takes full advantage of its environments to show this off.

Each stage presents a radically different environment and you’ll be flying through canyons, over volcanoes, through jungle and brightly lit night time skies. Again this isn’t a game about realism; it’s about indulgence and its lush and varied stages reflect this thinking.

After Burner Climax is an ‘on rails’ shooter and as you’d expect you are pulled through the stages with little choice on direction. There are some chances along the way however to choose your path at the end of certain stages which adds to the replay value along with special stages which are activated by fulfilling certain mission conditions.

Because Climax is an arcade game through and through, tearing through all the stages to the games end will only take around 20 minutes. Even with the alternate routes it won’t take long for you to see everything the game has to offer and this is one thing to bear in mind if you are thinking of buying the game but are new to the After Burner series.

After Burner is and always has been about high scores gained from downing enemy waves at speed, and ultimately the only longevity you are likely to get from Climax is from the pursuit of these. Even the achievements and trophies are little help since acquiring them all will take the average player little more than an hour or two given the ‘EX’ options.

The EX options are based on a series of awards within the game for meeting certain conditions such as a high score or dying a certain amount of times. These open up options in the EX menu which allow you to change elements of the game such as target reticule size, reducing trails from missiles and even the amount of credits (continues) you can use.

In most respects these are a great idea and allow the player to customise their arcade experience to their hearts content and they are particularly practical for those players who may struggle at this type of game. However activating EX options does not veto the right to earn achievements so you can essentially make their acquisition extremely easy.

This is a shame as it removes one of the reasons other than score to come back and keep playing. Climax also suffers due to a lack of variety; there are no boss type enemies and this was to my mind always a missed opportunity on Sega’s part. I had hoped Sega might add something like this in for the home release but alas this wasn’t to be.

After Burner Climax is a great (and long overdue) conversion of Sega’s coin-op; it’s keenly priced and offers some fun and frantic action that should fulfil your boyish Top Gun fantasies adequately. It does however lack variety and it does not have the depth and replayability of AM2’s other downloadable coin-op, Outrun Online.

If you’re a fan then it’s a must buy but for everyone else its perhaps one to think on. As a short lived adrenaline ride it’s a blast but just don’t expect to be coming back to it for months to come unless you are a score obsessive.

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