Possibly I’ve bought a mushy spot for on-rail shooters, or perhaps there’s one thing concerning the bass-heavy, rave-reminiscent music of Aaero that simply did one thing for me, however Mad Fellows’ debut rhythm shooter hypnotized me for weeks when it launched in 2017.
In 2024, there aren’t a variety of rhythm video games on the market, sadly, and that’s a crying disgrace, as a result of it’s one among my all-time favorite genres. I think about a variety of you studying this in all probability grew up on a gradual weight loss program of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and that’s why rhythm video games have a major place in your hearts, too. However let’s not additionally neglect the likes of Vib Ribbon or, extra lately, Hello-Fi Rush, too. The style, when given house to breathe, is a superb place to be.
You may think about my glee, then, once I learn that Aaero 2 is a Actual Factor, and that it’s coming to PC and Xbox. The sport will launch first on Xbox Sequence X/S – which is smart, since that’s the place the unique recreation discovered its small, loyal viewers – earlier than coming to PC barely later. It’ll hit Xbox Sequence X/S on October 15, 2024. However, PC gamers, concern not: it is possible for you to to play a near-final construct of the PC model as a part of Steam Subsequent Fest from October 14.
“As we shift our focus to the PC Steam model of Aaero2, we’re providing a demo of the near-finished recreation to PC gamers,” says Paul Norris, Mad Fellows’ artistic director. “This is not going to solely give them a style of what’s to return but additionally present us with helpful suggestions.”
The demo reveals off among the recreation’s important options; you get to trial just a few of the tracks that may characteristic within the recreation and see what the on-rails rhythm taking pictures is all about. It might look a bit primary, however there’s one thing of a circulation state the minimalism of the sport provokes, and I truthfully suppose it finally ends up feeling like Tetris Impact at instances. Excessive reward, that.
From what I’ve performed of this demo, that evaluation feels much more correct right here than within the first one, because of some high quality upgrades and the overall tightness of how Aaero 2 operates. There’s on-line co-op, too, that means you and your mates world wide can jam out to Monstercat’s wonderful music with out pause and work on these aggressive leaderboards collectively. In actual fact, multiplayer was a important focus for the sport this time round, as Norris explains.
“From the beginning, I insisted that if Aaero2 featured multiplayer, it could have to help each native and on-line play,” he says in a press launch. “Too usually, I’ve been excited a couple of co-op recreation solely to find it’s local-only.
“Incorporating on-line play into Aaero2 launched a bunch of extra challenges. The sport mechanics needed to be rigorously designed to cut back the impression of latency between gamers. On prime of that, the certification course of for an online-enabled recreation is considerably extra complicated.”
For a micro-studio, Mad Fellows actually has labored magic with this litlte gem of a lightshow. It’s audio/visible crack, to place it bluntly, and I can’t wait to pump weeks extra of my time into it when issues quieten down a bit within the triple-A gaming house.
That’s two-for-two, so far as I’m involved, Mad Fellows. Stick with it.