When Unlocking Things Goes Wrong

Well I was up early this morning so figured I may as well play more than the 20 seconds of After Burner Climax than I had previously played. I use to always play the original game in the arcades back in the 80`s whenever I used to get chance and it was a joy to play. After Burner Climax is no different, it really stays true to the game play of the original game and is just as fun to play in short sharp bursts.


There is however a problem with the game and that is the ability to unlock things as you play. Normally unlocking things is great, whether its a stronger weapon in a shooter or some other thing that adds to playing the game. Sega have instead managed to make it so that by unlocking things you lose something in the enjoyment of playing the game. Anything you unlock appears in the "EX OPTIONS" which is selectable from the main menu. In here you can turn on anything you unlock by playing the Arcade mode. The problem is after playing it for quite a while you get the chance to turn on things like "Lock On: Auto" this basically shoots everything for you, throw in the "Armor: No Damage" and you don't even need to play the game. (Well apart from moving the controller to the left and right on the canyon levels.


So basically you end up with a game that does everything for you while you sit there moving the controller left or right every few minutes for 30 seconds or so. Whoever thought that this was a good idea needs a good slap. As a result After Burner Climax is a good game that plays as you would expect it to, but then you start messing with the "EX OPTIONS" and the result is something that ends up just no longer being fun to play. So to wrap things up After Burner Climax is a good but short game that starts to lose its shine after about the third play through. It really is a shame as if Arcades were still as popular as they were in the late 80`s people would flock around this game shoving coin after coin in as opposed to people playing it at home for an hour or so and then forgetting about it forever. For the sake of giving it a rating it is worthy of a 6/10.