Luftrausers

In Luftrausers, you can kill a battleship by flying your plane through it. I'll repeat that. In Luftrausers, you can kill a battleship by flying your plane through it. If that can't sell you on the game alone, then you're beyond help. Vlambeer, the...

The easiest way to summarize Luftrausers is to call it the Hotline Miami of dogfighting games. It's incredibly difficult, but it's really good at sinking it's claws into you to keep you launching your planes onto the battlefield. It's a game that's...

The first thing that struck me when firing up Luftrausers for the first time was the way in which the game embodies that classic arcade-style feeling. I only intended to play for a few minutes; to take the game out for a test drive before returning to...

Still, these problems don’t kill the engine - they merely make it splutter. Like its name, separate parts combine to form a game that just makes sense.

Like the best of Vlambeers cannon, a simple concept executed beautifully. Limited enemy and level design,...

Thanks to varied battles, customizable planes, and challenges, it manages to improve on the classic formula of simple and addictive entertainment. It would have been cool to see even more variety implemented to keep players engaged after completing all missions, but adoring fans of arcade-style games should grab Luftrausers on PC, PS3, or Vita immediately.

Luftrausers' opacity can be a source of annoyance, but after 20 hours, I can't say it's discouraged me from leaping right back into the skies after my latest in-game death. I'd like to have been shown more of what makes it tick, but Luftrausers has a fun-enough gymnastics routine to keep it in the back of my mind as I go for an even higher score.

Each round is a breathless rush, every death painless enough to make restarting from scratch absolutely no hardship. Don't expect great depth or long-term thrills, but the action while it lasts is a master of both second-by-second action, and the structures that effortlessly stretch it out into a good few hours without it overstaying its welcome.

There is a thought that this is something which, once upon a time, you could have played on your browser for free. It's not that I want to detract from the fact that the creators deserve money for their work here, but sometimes one can't help stop and...

Presumably, Luftrausers has you facing an equivalent of the Allied forces rather than space rocks and...

On top of that, of course, there are levels to gain and missions to beat - shoot two of this, shoot 10 of that, shoot 20 of these while you're on fire - but such compulsion metalwork feels largely unnecessary when clamped onto Luftrauser's screaming air-tuned chassis. Checklists are for accountants, and Vlambeer ultimately wants to turn you into a daredevil.

The act of flight feels natural, and the next high score is always so close that it's easy to spend hours saying, "Just one more try." It may be a simple package on the surface, but Luftrausers will have you taking to the skies again and again.

The airborne chaos doesn’t end when you demolish the opposition’s tremendous battle zeppelin; online leaderboards and an insanely difficult bonus mode keep the action fresh. Luftrausers is one of the most satisfying, enthralling arcade shooters to hit the market in recent memory.

Vlambeer delivers bullet-hell shmup action with a twist in its sepia-toned Steampunk wargame, Luftrausers.