Sky Gunner - IGN

Tastes and tolerances in this regard naturally vary from gamer to gamer, however, and it's for that reason that I recommend Sky Gunner, at least to try out for a little while. When this game is fun, it's a whole lot of fun, and when it looks good, it looks downright brilliant -- that may be enough to win players over in spite of its technical flaws. Framerate or no, I had a hard time putting it down now and again.

Gameplay
Sky Gunner, in case you missed our extensive previews (dating back three or four Tokyo Game Shows), is a 3D shooter with an unusual perspective on the action. The camera presents your character, one of three nimble little flying machines, in a typical third-person view, but the line of sight is locked on to the targeted enemy, not whichever direction your character happens to be pointing. Thus, it's possible to be flying in a direction entirely contrary to where the camera is looking, although the selected target is always clearly visible.

In principle, this sounds like it would either make you sick or simply not work. Something roughly similar was tried in the excrable Macross Digital Mission games, and fell flat on its mechanical face. Sky Gunner's developers are a fair bit more talented, though, and manage to make an unusual idea work quite well. The camera system automatically regulates the relative distance between the character and the point of view, and movement control is extremely responsive -- it's actually quite easy to right oneself and get aimed at the appropriate target, even if the camera is swinging around to follow it.

With the camera behaving far better than you might assume, it's easy to get down to the business of flitting about and shooting the hell out of everything. This, of course, is the fun part. Sky Gunner blends flashy action and easy basic controls with a surprising amount of depth, including a selection of sub-weapons and special abilities that nicely works to differentiate the three different aircraft (one of which is unlockable). There's no explicit variation in difficulty level, but the three planes are implicitly suited to different levels of skill and styles of play. Femme's ship has a quick-turn ability that instantly rotates the craft around to face the selected target -- perfect for beginners getting the hang of the control scheme. The other two have more advanced maneuvering capabilities, so players who've been through the game can show off some more a second time.

Sky Gunner is certainly worthy of a second time through. The story mode is short, but it plays very differently depending on which character you select, and the missions themselves are lengthy and intricate. Each consists of several smaller objectives broken up by cinematics and scripted events, so it's never anything as simple as a basic search-and-destroy, and the spectacle of the climactic boss encounters is always a kick at the end of a mission.

Which segues somewhat neatly into the downside of all of this. In the default framerate mode, the game becomes questionably playable in its more hectic moments. In some of the missions (particularly the mecha chase, Femme's third sortie) this doesn't become an issue, but more often than not, the appearance of a gigantic flying battleship or towering robot war machine, with attendant visual effects in the background, means the framerate drops to near-nil. It doesn't get stuck that low for very long periods of time, but it certainly happens enough to be a problem -- control response naturally takes a big hit while the game is chugging down like that.

The 30fps mode implemented for the American release naturally helps during those harsher moments, but it also invariably spoils some of the fun of the long stretches when the game runs smoothly. It's an unfortunate quandary, and one that I have a hard time resolving satisfactorily. Certainly the game is better with the option to lock at the lower framerate, but it's impossible to shake the wish to eat one's cake and have it too, if you see what I mean. If nothing else, I do hope Pixel Arts manages to do a sequel, because with more time for tuning the engine and designing new missions, that could definitely be something special.

Graphics
If we can leave aside discussions of the framerate, it's at least easy to agree that Sky Gunner looks excellent at its best moments. The super-cute visual style (think Miyazaki meets Ojamajo Doremi) perhaps hits a narrowish target audience, but I'm personally quite fond of it, both the 2D cinematics and the 3D realizations of those same designs. It's endlessly bright and colorful, and the ship designs are very inventive. So what if nobody has any fingers? What's so important about that?

And regardless of how the artwork bounces off your personal tastes, the engine certainly does some impressive stuff when it gets going. Enemy battleships are composed of dozens of independently animated and individually destructible sections, all of them chucking out flak and cannon fire. Details like that appear on smaller craft, too -- friendly ships have a clever animation for disposing of shell casings, and the bad guys parachuting out of their destroyed microlights is terribly cute. The environmental effects are pretty sharp as well, particularly some combinations of fog and lighting in dogfights that zip in and out of the clouds, and the explosions are glorious, especially when accented by particles from the fireworks missiles. If only it ran smoothly all the time...but, well, yes.

Sound
Sky Gunner's score and sound effects very nicely suit its visual style, with a blend of high-flying orchestral tunes and more down-to-earth pop sounds. The soundtrack is tuned to match the excitement level -- when you see a massive dogfight, you hear it as well, with explosions, gunfire, and engines chattering all over the place. I have a particularly soft spot for the imminent-crash noise -- take too much damage and there's a wonderfully evocative effect as you spiral in towards potential doom.

There's also a choice between Japanese and English dialogue, sparing us any debate over that particular hot button. I didn't mind the game either way, although I think the personality of smaller elements like the bumbling Poulets (the chirpy little enemy cannon-fodder pilots) comes across better in the original Japanese. Your mileage is welcome to vary, of course.