The First Starfighter

Humans develop AI, AI wipes out humans, humans fight back. It’s a tale as old as sci-fi. Granted, it’s a little more unsettling now that we’re just about a decade away from this actually happening, but maybe the scientists and engineers have started on the space fighter that will be our salvation. If you’re hoping to pilot it, Rogue Flight will let you get in some training.

Rogue Flight is a rail shooter along the lines of Star Fox, complete with barrel roll. The game just screams anime from start to finish, as it should, mainly focusing on the action; the narrative is told almost entirely via the intro cinematic and by your support crew as they bark information into your headset. Their voices may be familiar, as Rogue Flight includes actors from Fallout 76, Overwatch, Sailor Moon, Naruto, and more, depending upon the localization you choose.

The story is quickly paced, serving mainly to push you directly into the action. You may not learn a lot about everyone involved, but if you’re any kind of anime fan you’ll get what you need to know just by the way they’re drawn and voiced.

Before climbing into your ship, you’re seated in a simulator so you can learn the controls. The game is mostly about dodging and firing, sure, but there are new approaches here that will take some getting used to. For instance, you can lock missiles onto enemies by holding down L and dragging your targeting reticle over them. To fire, you just release L. Handy.

You can also brake to pull in power-ups, but you’re more vulnerable to attacks while doing so.

The coolest control feature is arguably the wingtrail maneuver. With this, you spin your ship around to wash over enemies with your jet stream. This tail-whip is a fun way to clear out multiple enemies at once when properly executed.

Knowing which attack to use when is one of the keys to victory. Properly upgrading your ship is the other. Numerous cosmetic upgrades are available, if that’s your thing, but—more importantly—you’ll get many chances to deck it out with new and enhanced abilities. There are over 40 unlockable weapons, and the game expects you to use them (the wave cannon and seraph were favorites of mine). When I first started, I was rather stunned at the difficulty increase between levels. Replaying a troublesome one after the right upgrades, however, made it much less troublesome.

If difficulty is a concern, don’t sweat it. Rogue Flight comes with five difficulty settings that allow you to face nearly impossible odds or to just (somewhat) safely enjoy the story. If the difficulty of games like this push you away too soon, you can use these settings to ease into it. After some familiarity, you’ll be able to ramp up to the higher difficulties where the real fun (and, ergo, satisfaction) is. With this approach, you don’t need to worry about the game becoming repetitive; different paths across the game’s nine stages provide different challenges and endings. And even beyond that, you can unlock roguelike game modes to test your skills when you’ve exhausted the plot.

Rogue Flight’s greatest strength, however, may be its performance. Gameplay is surprisingly smooth throughout, with framerate drops only occurring during some of the more intense battle segments (mostly when tail-whipping, I found). The controls are responsive, allowing you to focus on the action and your strategies. However, they can’t be remapped. Some of my common abilities were auto-assigned to the right stick, which I found to be finicky, but I wasn’t allowed to change them.

If Rogue Flight’s pacing isn’t enough, the changes in scenery and level design should hold your attention. I was impressed by how much visual variety the developers were able to pull off considering the game largely set in the (not so, in this case) emptiness of space. The boss battles can be quite majestic, too, once you’re able to figure out a good plan of attack.

Rogue Flight still is not a game for everyone. As a rail shooter, it’s basically a third-person POV shmup. If you’re not into those, there’s not a whole lot here to change your mind. The game looks great and plays well, but it doesn’t really aim to do more than that. Genre fans will see that as great news, however, and will thoroughly enjoy themselves on this latest lone mission to save the planet.