XBOX REVIEW | Aerial_Knight’s DropShot

A few years ago I played Aerial_Knight’s Never Yield, and I recall it being a super stylish but short game from a solodev with the inspiring goal of having more black protagonists in gaming. DropShot continues that legacy (albeit our main character has turned purple from being bitten by a radioactive dragon) and it also doubles as a tribute to a dear friend of the developer who has sadly passed away. It was heartwarming seeing the shoutout in the credits for sure.

So what it DropShot? You play as Smoke Wallace, who developed the superpower of being able to shoot from your fingertips, and the entire game is you being dropped out of a plane to shoot bad guys, dragons and tanks in midair. Cool concept, with lots of style, so I was eager to start blasting.

Things I liked!

• Stylish | From the purple protagonist, to simple touches like the UI for the “bullets” in left in your fingertips, the game undoubtedly has a lot of visual appeal in its presentation. Though strangely a lot of it comes from stills. Like the main menu, start menu or other non-moving elements. The 3D assets don’t really get their time to shine as often, with the majority of the screen usually being empty space, and the models being far away.

• Right amount of challenge | I first thought, wrongfully, that you needed to shoot all targets in a group of five levels, before the next five would unlock. But you simply need to land safely and defeat every 5th level’s boss. That makes it pretty accessible and manageable to see all the content the game has to offer.

• Very doable achievement list | If you beat the game, you’ll have unlocked all of the achievements, including the ones for shooting X amount of people or popping X amount of balloons. You also get one for defeating every boss, and the final “over 9000” one, pops when beating the final level. About 3 hours (including retries) for 1000G is within achievement hunters’ dreams, and I know a lot of our readers care about this, so I thought it was worth mentioning.

• The final levels “got it right” | The final 10 or so levels out of 50, finally get it right and have enough things to shoot, dodge or interact with. This is when the game really got going for me and started to be really fun, but it did take 40 levels to get there.

Mixed

• Power-ups | I wish there were more varied power-ups to pick up, like the laser skull shown above. Since those were very fun the first few times I got them, but there are only a handful of variations, and they struggle from the same “distance”

• No manual reload | You can’t just reload when you want to; you have to shoot or punch ammo balloons. This would be fine, but there are a lot of moments with seconds of doing nothing, waiting for you to slowly drop to the next balloon. You can melee punch enemies, but usually it’s too risky, and they’ll shoot you first.

• Acceleration | You can beat a level sooner by going through slipstreams, but I would have preferred manual control over my speed: LT to dive, LB to slow down? That would have also helped with the empty moments of not having anything to shoot: give me a button that makes me drop faster.

• Music & Sound effects | There are a few nice music selections, like the beat that drops at the end of every level when the score screen is shown. But overall, I feel like the music failed to hit the adrenaline rush it could have created if it slapped a bigger beat and bass on it all. Sound effects are also pretty basic, but they get the job done.

Disliked

• Tiny Targets | Let’s start with my biggest frustration: It’s hard to aim. Targets are always tiny, there is no aim assist on consoles and your shots have very short reach. It’s not like you have actual bullets that continue on their trajectory; the distance between targets has to be “just right”, and that makes it very annoying. I can’t count the number of times I had an enemy in sight, with the black cross as shown above, but only when you get closer and when the target turns red, can you actually hit them. The problem is that other enemies may be flanking you from the side while this is happening.

• Lack of oversight | Other human enemies can shoot at you, so it’s vital you take them out quickly. Sometimes this requires looking to the sides (and sadly never fully behind you, because the camera doesn’t go that far). But while you’re aiming away from looking straight down, you also can’t tell when you’re about to hit a laser or slam face first into some floating rocks.

• Incorrect information | It’s not always clear when exactly an enemy is about to shoot you, and sometimes the hint of them going to is a split second away from getting shot. But when I first started playing, I think my main issue was not knowing exactly when I’d reach the bottom. It’s not clear where the end of a level is. It shows green markers, but always ends waaaaay before you reach them. The 2nd level has only 5 enemies, but the last one can’t be shot until you’re way too close to the end of the lvl. You only have a very small window of opportunity to hit him, and while the level is only 40 seconds long, it still means replaying 40 seconds just to retake that one split-second shot. = frustration (I eventually gave up going for 100% because of this).
  
  There are also a few levels where pickups appear to be on the critical path down, but floating towards them prompts a 5-second countdown with “return to the play area”.

• Slow | The game should feel like an adrenaline rush, but too often the falling feels too slow. Especially in the first levels when there is sometimes 5-7 seconds of just waiting for the next thing to shoot, but those seconds feel like an eternity.

• No enemy variety | By my count, there are only 4 different types of enemies. Regular ones, ones with a shield that require an extra hit, boss dragons and a tank floating down from a parachute. There are some race levels that focus on being the first to reach a falling egg, but that just requires falling through X2 speed pick-ups or tunnels that accelerate you.

• Restart pain | It’s not a long game, and I don’t think this was an intentional decision to prolong the game time, but there are some weird speed bumps, like being forced to watch the intro cinematic of the level each time you retry. Or when you beat a level, the highlight will always go back to 1-1, making you toggle to the new level you want to play. It’s tiny changes like this that can make a world of difference, especially in a game with a score: give me an instant retry button that skips the opening animation. Or tell me when an enemy is forever “out of sight,” so I know I should restart.

• Bugs | I was told this would be fixed, so it doesn’t count against the score, but at the time of playing, I had a bug where the final few bosses would give me a “Game Over. Retry?” screen after killing them. It took me a while to understand this was a bug and not just me dying to something I wasn’t aware of. Waiting a few seconds got me the “success” screen. You can subtract about 30 minutes from my playtime below for this reason, since this should be fixed soon.

How long did I play the review before publishing? 3 hours and 30 minutes
How long to beat the story? 2 hours if you’re good, 3 hours if you need some retries
How many Achievements did I earn before publishing? 1000G or 17/17
How long to achieve 1000G | see above: 2-3 hours
You’ll love this game if you like these | Arcade games, On-rails shooters

CONCLUSION

Score: 58/100

Aerial_Knight’s DropShot jumped out of the plane with the goal to entertain, and sometimes succeeds in its objective, especially in the later levels. But I had to shoot my way past too many frustrations to get there. The dev clearly has a flair for style, but there is a lot of room for improvement when it comes to second-to-second gameplay enjoyment.

Regardless of criticism above, I still look forward to whatever he’ll cook up next, the industry does need more bold and weird games that start with a protagonist bitten by a radioactive dragon and the ability to finger gun his enemies down.