I’ve always loved those semi-futuristic music/rhythm games like Amplitude and Thumper, and with the fabulous Rez it all made sense. And then there is the musical rail shooter Aaero. The first game came out in 2017 and was probably hidden from most people, but like Rez it is a music game with shooter elements, although they are not directly comparable.
Now Aaero 2 is out on Xbox Series X/S (a Steam version is planned later) and has been in development for almost five years. It largely follows the same steps that made the original great, meaning the gameplay is still split in two: there’s a musical component and a shooting component. In the musical part, you follow a light trail with your little spaceship that meanders and positions itself depending on the sound of the music. The more closely you follow it, the higher the multiplier is and the more points you get. If you go off course, you lose energy and the game can quickly end.
In the shooter part, Aaero 2 is similar to Rez. Here you have to move a crosshair across the screen and fire missiles or projectiles at a number of nearby enemies. This usually takes place in more open areas than the music part, but all the tracks are on rails and you follow a set route through all of them. However, the shooting section is the weakest part of the game, as these sections make you feel disconnected from the experience: game feedback in the form of clearer sound effects or joystick feedback is missing here. Therefore, these sections can be a bit frustrating, as you can suddenly die almost without realizing it.
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Of course, music is a central aspect of both components of the game. This becomes clear in the music part, where you have to follow this glowing trail in order for the music to play properly, but the music also plays a (somewhat minor) role in the filming part. Here you can fire rockets to the beat of the music, meaning the rockets will be faster and more effective when they hit. Although the two parts give the impression that the game is quite fragmented, it still works well as a whole, with the two elements sometimes merging together, especially on higher difficulties.
Aaero 2 features one of the most intense and delicious soundtracks we’ve heard this year. Musical taste is of course subjective, but for a game like this the soundtrack works just fine here. It is the work of the Canadian music company Monstercat. The music ranges from drum’n’bass and dubstep to house and something reminiscent of trance, and if you know anything about these corners of electronic music you’ll recognize names like Stonebank, Muzz and Proff. It’s a really beautiful and intense soundtrack, and it’s really impressive how a small developer like Mad Fellows was able to create such a licensed soundtrack and, last but not least, finance it.
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Aaero 2 is not an easy game. However, the game’s chill mode, where you can’t die and your spaceship almost gets stuck on the glowing track, gives you the opportunity to simply experience the tracks and music. In this mode, it is also not necessary to earn the necessary stars to unlock the next clue, of which there are 18 in total. If you want more of a challenge, choose one of the higher difficulties and good luck from now on.
Aaero 2 is new compared to its predecessor and features a multiplayer mode where you can play cooperatively or PvP both locally and online. In both co-op and PvP, there is a clear line for each player and a set of common enemies to contend with. In PvP you have to be greedy and take care of everything you can before your opponent does, pushing a small marker on the screen further and further towards your opponent, like a kind of scale. They also need to earn a number of Crowns, which act as multipliers at the end of the course, so that even if a player leaves the course with fewer points than their opponent, they can still win if they have earned more multipliers than their opponent during the course the course. These are two fairly simple multiplayer modes, but they work very well.
The visual effects in Aaero 2 are omnipresent. They range from incredibly boring menus and some questionable boss art to really nice boss design, very nice futuristic environments and nice motion visual design as you follow this glowing track through the tracks and the environments flicker and light up in rhythm Music and how you connect with the track. In general it looks very good.
Aaero 2 is definitely not a game for everyone. It has a relatively small audience and you might be a little worried that it will get lost in the mass of games coming out these days because it deserves better. It’s not quite up to par, the shooter part is bad, but it’s still a pretty good musical shooter, made by a small team that came up with a licensed, heavy and effective drum’n’bass/dubstep soundtrack has secured. When the music, the graphics and your ability to stay on the glowing trail through a futuristic factory come together, especially with a friend, everything falls into place.
