AER – Memories of Old

A beautiful little game. Flying around is great fun, which is a nice change of pace from the more usual games where flying is annoying and stressful (*cough* Spyro *cough*). The only really major flaw is that saving doesn't work inside the temples. Quit inside a temple or just leave it for whatever reason, and you lose all progress inside that temple. Definitely not worth the full price though. The game is quite short, with not a lot of variety.

For the people who do/did enjoy this game, I just thought I'd throw out a heads-up that, even though the soundtrack isn't on GOG, for whatever reason, it is on Bandcamp for 7 SEK... which, come to find out is the equivalent of $0.75 USD ... after tax. Kind of a no-brainer. And I wasn't planning on giving my opinion on the game, since unlike everyone else on the planet, I have zero desire to do reviews plus, I'm not too far into the game, but fuck it, I'm here so... I "demoed" the game and bought it outright because a) It was $1.50, b) The flight kinda reminded me of the general physics that the old Star Fox for SNES had, and c) It's basically my new meditative escape from, another game with floating islands, Furi, a game which has been handing me my ass over and over and over yet again. AER's controls are playing well with me, using an XBOX gamepad and having tried the m+k setup (even if the jump is just a hair off... loose kinda, but still fine,) the story seems slow but serviceable so far, and the physics are fully enjoyable. I deducted a star because in an open world like this and with islands of all sizes everywhere, it seems criminal to populate them with as little as they did; more interactive sites and characters would have filled out the world nicely in my less-than-humble opinion. I'd say that the deducted star was also for the lack of voice acting, but honestly, even if they'd nailed the voice work, it may have been out of place in a game that's this serene. AER is basic as hell in just about every sense possible, but that's not necessarily a bad thing, and it certainly doesn't make it a bad game overall, it just feels like there's a lot of wasted potential. (Also, concerning one person's complaint about the sensitivity of the controls, there's literally four sensitivity sliders that you can adjust in the Settings section.)

The only real draw AER has is just how fun and relaxing it is to fly around, and maybe its unique visual style. But flying is so underutilized, it serves mostly as a way to get from place to place. You are encouraged to fly around in order to explore every island and area in the map, but the map is so badly structured, you see everything there is to see fairly quickly. Firstly, you can't fly too low or too high, otherwise you'll "die" and get transported to one of the islands. Meaning the 3D map acts as a 2D map, where all the islands are roughly at the same height, creating a corridor you can just glide through. There are also only a handful of distinctive islands, and those seem to be surrounded by moon islands - islands far smaller, which you see no reason to land on. The plot also doesn't require you to explore anything beyond those main islands, and a few smaller islands to complete the game. The plot is completely forgettable, and to complete it you'll have to spend quite a lot of time in caves solving various platform puzzles. But the map is small, so even if all you'll want to do is fly around, you'll eventually come across the island you were supposed to reach an hour before. There is a draw to those segments, but it stems from the world being uninhabited - besides one specific island, you'll see no humans living there. There's no-one to interact with or get to know, which is a shame. Makes the experience fairly lonely. Which makes the caves often more interesting than the islands they're in. Which is another drawback to this game. The map seems to have been created in a hurry, with items and animals repeating themselves far too often. It makes AER feel like a game that suffered from a lack of budget. A game that could have been much more. As it is, it's a not too difficult game with a unique art style and a nice mechanic. It's not exactly a game for kids, but I imagine they might enjoy it.

Own the Steam version, guess this one will be the same. First off this isn't a game in the traditional sense, rather a world which can be traversed and experienced in a leisurely manner. There's some nice details to observe but nothing much in the way of content - no enemies, items, weapons, upgrades etc, it's all very stripped back and presented in a beautiful flat poly art style which really works, giving the game a clean look with pastel colours. It's a very welcoming world which entices the player in to explore it The main star of the show here is the flying physics - the player character can turn into a bird and from the of has a full repertoire of intuitive flying techniques to soar over and swoop down to the many sky islands which make up the games' world. It feels like no other game out there in the way it gives you the freedom to explore, even if it is light on depth and detail. The indoor sections are short and a welcome change, again more of a tour through an art gallery than a game. They help to extend the game although I wish they had been a bit more complex. I'm a bit torn with this game - on one hand I wish it the ideas had been developed into a "proper" game with dialogue, NPCs, enemies, RPG elements, quests and richly detailed locations and lore. On the other hand I really enjoyed it for what it is and liked the move away from generic gameplay elements.

It is some time since I played games, but this one bought tear to my eye. I saw Flower and Journey before, but only for a moment. I have Flower and Gris in my play to queue, so this was not entirely alien to me, but still, very nice. I am first "castle" in and so far so good. It can a be a pretty boring at times (to some, I imagine), but it has really nice ambiance and atmosphere. Polygonal art is very innovative and well done, there seem to be no single textured pixel in this game, yet world is pretty detailed and believable. I would welcome some smoothing on character facess still, at least goraud shading, but not a major problem Still my most beloved adventure is ancient LBA (Little big Adventure) and even that has more interactivity than this (regarding in-game entities). Which is a pity! World is beautiful and detailed, snd more interaction with items and animals (feed them or pet them, perhaps eat them) and NPCs ("mono"-dialogoues only) would certainly liven up the game. Pots could have been usable and openable, tents and lodgings enterable. Bonus air tracks/races could have been implemented. And simple inventory could have been presented. However this is only lttile nitpick. Flying itself is pretty interesting and quite well done, and it wculd stand, as core gameplay loop, entirely on it's own. Platforming is quite fun as well and collision detection is pretty robust and forgiving. World is beautiful and detailed full of animals which is nice touch. Main sstoryline is pretty elaborate, but I am missing some oiptional side quests to make things interesting. Overall very atmospheric and interesting game, I am loving it!