Have you ever wanted to play a shmup where you are able to control a dolphin that is piloting a ship and blowing up armies of enemy fighter pilots and robots?............ kind of a very specific want, but lucky for you, Aero Fighters 2 is there to fulfill all of your dolphin-y desires! Not only that, but it will also provide you with a pretty great shmup experience, bringing you the same base shmup gameplay you know and love, giving plenty of great power ups to acquire, many characters to try out, and plenty of the explosions and insanity that you could ever want from one of these games. Sure, it does carry the same issues the first game had, like being too short and having very short stages, but it was still really fun for the brief time you would play it, and I feel like that would be more important than anything else. But not to worry, because if you are in need of even more dolphin shmup action, then look no further then with the very next game in the series, Aero Fighters 3.

Going into this one, I already knew I was gonna have a blast with it. These titles have usually managed to deliver in quality every time, meaning that I was gonna be in for the same great shmup experience that I have been in for on numerous occasions, which definitely gave me some high hopes. Although, I was hoping that they were gonna actually try to do something new for a change, so did they do that?............ no, but at the end of the day, I would still say it is a pretty good shmup. You get all the great elements that you got from the first two games, with more insanity mixed into it all, and this all makes it the best in the series so far, even if that is by a VERY close margin.

The story is, again, very straightforward, where the alien from the previous games are attacking once again, this time even managing to get the jump on the Aero Fighters by destroying their base and plenty of their fighter jets, so it is up to them all to launch to the skies once again, using old WWII warplanes, to take them down once again, which is at least one point creative then the plot from the previous two games, so I will give it that. The graphics are a pretty big step up from the previous games, having the same general look and feel of quality, while also incorporating plenty of more detailed and smooth animations, making for the most visually solid game so far, the music is pretty good, having plenty of decent tracks that accompany you while you are blowing shit up, with this one managing to stick with me even after the game was done, and the gameplay/control is identical to that of the previous two games, which I would call insanely redundant at this point, but I am too distracted by the craziness to care.

The game is yet another one of your typical arcade shmup, where you take control of one of 10 different characters in different fighter jets, go through a set of eight different levels, which will take you through a variety of locations, even to the depths of space, shoot down every single thing you possibly can on screen, just so that you can not only ensure your safety, but to get as many points as you can, gather plenty of powerups and bombs in order to give you additional firepower against any kind of oncoming threat, and take on plenty of bosses that will test your skills in terms of firing and dodging, with there being quite a few tricky ones here to take on. It once again manages to mix that same batch of familiarity and adrenaline that makes these games so much fun to play, making for yet another round of bombastic and fun action, even if it is still lacking in several areas.

If you have played either of the Aero Fighters games that was released before this one, or any other similar shmups before, you pretty much know exactly what you are going to get for the most part. You fly around, you shoot down dozens of enemies, you fight big bosses, and you are thinking about how a dolphin is able to pilot a plane the whole time, it’s all basic shit we have seen before. However, I think the one thing that makes this stand out from other similar games, not just in terms of the explosiveness and variety in characters, is just how insane it can be when it comes to how it mixes up its basic features. For example, instead of having typical bombs that you can deploy to get massive damage onto a group of enemies, this time, you will usually actually temporarily transform into a much stronger version of yourself, such as a blazing phoenix or even a whole ass giant robot! These forms are pretty fun to take on, and they do help deal out MASSIVE amounts of damage in those brief moments where you really need it. Not to mention, the bosses can also be just as creative and weird as the characters and their transformations, not only bringing back the monkeys and eyeballs from the previous game, but also integrating new ones like a giant squid boss and……… whatever the fuck this thing is.

Unfortunately though, since this is an Aero Fighters game, it does have some things dragging it down, such as it still refusing to change after so long. Like, I get it, being consistent with your style of gameplay and improving upon it is important and all, but I can imagine plenty of people getting pretty bored of how repetitive these games can get, especially for a shmup. What also doesn’t help this is that, ONCE AGAIN, it doesn’t fix any of the problems that I had with the previous two games, with the stages once again being very short, and you having to play through the game twice to get a proper ending. I’m sure they expected this to be made up for with the fact that there are different endings that you can get for all of the different characters, but let’s be real here: I’m not playing through this game 20 times just to see all of the endings. I got no time for that shit.

Overall, despite having no sense of character development whatsoever, Aero Fighters 3 still manages to provide the same basic, yet highly enjoyable gameplay that you have come to know and love from this series, and with its short amount new features, I would consider it to be the best game in the series so far. I would recommend it for those who were big fans of the previous two games, as well as those who are big shmup fans in general, because while it isn’t all too new or exciting, it should provide you and a friend a really good half-hour of entertainment, and that’s all that really matters at the end of the day. But anyways, now with all that out of the way, I am off to go do research to see what other kinds of animals out there are able to fly warplanes flawlessly like dolphins. There will probably be lots of deaths, but trust me, it is all for the greater good.

Game #612