Here at QT3 you’ve already read about Aaero from Tom. He included it in his Best Games of 2017 so far in the middle of last year, and then once again in his Top Ten Games of 2017 at the end of the year.
I really love this game. It sticks to electronic dance music, opens up my world to some excellent music tracks, and makes you work at completing each track using both the analog sticks and your ears.
I saw just a quick video of this so I may not have gotten the most comprehensive impression, but this game looked more like Amplitude than like Rez to me. I wasn’t a big fan of Amplitude, it never held my interest for more than five minutes. Is there more, I don’t know, free aiming stuff like Rez in this than I saw?
You use the left stick to move your ship on the screen, and the right stick to aim. Once you move your right stick over an enemy it locks on. Then you can press right trigger to fire. If you fire in rhythm with the music, I believe you do more damage. For moving your ship, you move to keep in lockstep with the music on certain sections where you follow along in a circular pattern with the music, and in other sections you just need to move your ship because there’s a hazard you need to dodge.
Here’s a good video of the first song in the game on Master difficulty:
That song is much easier on Normal difficulty, which is the way I’ve played it. Once you do all the songs on Normal, you will have enough stars to unlock advanced, and then play through on Advanced to unlock Master.
It plays a lot more like Rez than it does Amplitude. In Amplitude you’re pressing buttons in step with the music, which you’re not doing here. Instead you’re moving the ship along a ribbon. Plus you still have the sections where you’re shooting enemies, which is more like Rez as well.
Yes, the ribbon thing is why I see an analog with Amplitude. Not exact, not 1:1 mind you, just thebidea of staying on the critical path. I didn’t see a shooting part, probably because I lost interest in the ribbon bit.
I don’t think you’re stuck on the ribbon. I think you have to follow it, but you can theoretically move wherever on the screen you want.
Anyway, I love any and all rhythm games ever made. This shit’s like catnip to me. Onto the wishlist with this one.
Wait, how is it that you guys aren’t all already playing Aaero? What the hell?
-Tom
I’m not sure how I’m going to get the spider boss in the song “Revenge”. By the end of the song, I only have him down to about 30% health. That’s a long way to go. At least with the worm boss, I was pretty close to killing him even on my first few attempts at him. (I finally finished off the worm boss last night).
Boy, I bought it and gave it a try after Tom recommended it, and it just did not work for me. I love a lot of games like this: Rez, Audiosurf, Entwined… I even liked LaserLife pretty well. I think the main problem with this was the music. It just felt noisy and uninteresting to me. And the right hand shooting required way too much precision for me while I’m also trying to do the left hand tracing thing. I seemed to always miss the timing on shooting, too. I’m sure I need to practice more, but it ended up just feeling like Rez, but three times more complex, and with less compelling music.
You might already know this, but when you shoot in time with the music, your shots do more damage. There’s visual feedback for when you’re nailing the rhythm.
I’m pretty sure it’s impossible to defeat some of the bosses if you haven’t figured this out. I can speak from experience. :)
-Tom
I played “Revenge” (Spider boss song) for an hour before work yesterday. I got pretty good at getting it down to a sliver of health by the end.
And then right before I went to work, I had a run where I got its health down to zero before going into the final tunnel. All I had to do was survive the tunnel and I’d be home free!
Of course, I didn’t make it through the tunnel alive. For some reason I ran into the debris and died multiple times, which I’ve never done before.
Last night instead of watching Tom’s live stream, I kept playing Revenge for an hour or two. For some reason I’d regressed and gotten really bad at my rhythm. Suddenly I was only getting him down to half health by the end of the song.
But an hour or so later, I got my rhythm back, and I eventually got the Spider last night.
I didn’t understand the reference in that Achievement. Apparently that’s some Canadian that’s building a giant robot spider:
I got to the final song on Normal, but couldn’t defeat the giant octopus. Not yet anyway. I can get it to about halfway by the end of the song.
One of the main problems I’m having in this song is that there’s a lot of visuals on the screen, and my OG Xbox One is not able to handle it very well. I’m losing a lot of frames on the ribbon portions, which makes it really hard for me to stay on the ribbon. Still, being accurate on the ribbon should be irrelevant to taking down the monster, which is good.
So that’s all the songs on Normal, but to unlock advanced, I have to get about 8 more stars on older songs.
I played this for a few hours yesterday. I still can’t beat the endboss giant octopuss, but to take a break I repeated a lot of the older songs to try to improve my score on them. I managed to eek out a couple of stars from those. I think I’m still 3 or 4 more stars short of unlocking Advanced mode.
I know I’m only talking to myself here, but I’m infuriatingly close to unlocking Advanced difficulty. I just need one star. Last night I got the Calamari achievement for killing the giant octopus, but I still only got 4 stars for that song. There’s about 5 songs in the game where I only have 4 stars instead of 5, and there’s one song in which I only have 3 stars. What’s that one song? It’s battle against the giant worm. I can defeat the work, and be really good with staying on the rhythm, and yet still only get 3 stars on that one.
I just need one more star from … somewhere.
Progress report: I got 68 stars. I unlocked Advanced.
And then I realized I couldn’t get Advanced stars to get the 70 Stars achievement. That achievement is for getting 70 stars on Normal difficulty. So I went back and got two more stars on Normal before returning to Advanced.
Advanced is definitely much harder.
For the most part, in Normal difficulty you either are moving the ship with the left thumbstick, or you’re aiming with the right thumbstick, taking out enemies. You’re almost never asked to do both at the same time, with a couple of exceptions, where the track you’re following with the left thumbstick is absolutely straight.
Well, in Advanced, as you’d expect, there’s much more cross mingling already. And not only that, there’s more enemies in the enemy areas and they fire more shots at you. So it’s a lot harder just to pass a level now. Fun, though! The training wheels are finally off.
Progress report: 74/75 Stars on Normal now. 100/100 Secrets. 25 Stars on Advanced.
It’s so satisfying to get better at this game over time. What seemed impossible doesn’t seem impossible anymore.
Edit: New Progress Report after this morning’s play:
75/75 Stars on Normal. I can finally put that difficulty to bed. No need to open it again.
34/75 Stars on Advanced.
I like that every achievement that I’m earning now is a rare achievement. It sounds like most people who play the game only play through each song on Normal, and get around 68 stars. Everything after that was a rare achievement.
This game just gives me so much pleasure to play.
It’s been a while since I listened to so much new music, so that’s a huge part of it for me. It’s just nice to sit down each evening and really experience the music.
Just to get in the nuts and bolts of it: The controller vibrates when you’re on the ribbon. The closer you are to the correct spot on the ribbon, the more it buzzes pleasingly in your hand. The controller also pulses with the beat, so you experience the bass of the song not just through the sound system, but also through your hands. It all adds up to a superlative listening experience.
I finally unlocked Master difficulty last night. It was really great going back to Bass Cannon after struggling with all those hard songs at the end of Advanced Difficulty. I got 5 stars on my first try.
I looked up the lyrics. These are beautiful.
Let the bass cannon kick it
Let the bass cannon kick it
Let the bass cannon kick it
Let the bass cannon kick it!
NYEEEOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
(Bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon.)
Fuwp fuwp fuwp fuwuwp wuwp
GUHYEEOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
(Bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon.)
Fuwp fuwp fuwp fuwuwp wuwp
NYEEEOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW
(Bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon, bass cannon.)
Fuwp fuwp fuwp fuwuwp wuwp
This weekend I finished the last song on Master difficulty, and got 76 stars on Master difficulty total.
There’s still two more achievements to track down if I want to get 5 stars on all the songs on Advanced difficulty and Master difficulty, but I don’t think I’m that much of a completionist, so I uninstalled the game, so that I won’t be tempted.
Overall, I loved this game.
I really miss playing this game. I should re-install it. But then I won’t play other games. Hmmm, I really shouldn’t install it.
Sorry, just a bit of clarification: is that bass cannon in that it fires large mouthed, fresh water fish or bass cannon like the dubstep gun from Saints Row?
