Astro Flame: Starfighter from Sometimes You is a classic-style shoot ’em up with 3D graphics. Learn more about it in our Astro Flame: Starfighter review!
Astro Flame: Starfighter from Sometimes You is a classic-style shoot ’em up with 3D graphics. You’ll be taking on 15 levels of increasing difficulty where you’ll have to make the most of your weapons and upgrades to be able to defeat the hundreds of enemies in each stage, as well as the big boss at the end of each mission. Do you have what it takes to destroy the evil forces threatening the galaxy’s peace?
You’ll control your spaceship with the left analog stick or the D-Pad as you move around each level while avoiding enemy fire. You can use your main gun with the R1 or R2 buttons. There’s also the possibility of selecting autofire from the options menu if you feel like it. Pressing the Square button will unleash some powerful rockets, which are in limited stock. Once you start to purchase new weapons and skills, these will be added to the X, Triangle, Circle, L1, and L2 buttons.
The resources that you collect can be spent at the hangar to upgrade your ship. You can spend resources on boosting the main weapon, adding a drone, and a plasma gun, increasing the ship’s armor so that it can protect it from more damage, increasing the power of rockets, adding a volley, a bomb, a battle drone, and even a protection wave. As expected, the more you upgrade your ship, the more expensive each subsequent upgrade will get, but at least you’ll be able to mix and match as needed to favor your playing style and be able to deal more damage to enemies.
Along with obtaining resources from enemies, you will also sometimes be able to collect power-ups that will add additional charges to each of the aforementioned upgrades. If you don’t buy any of them, then the only upgrade that will show up will be for your rockets since you start with some of them by default. Once you purchase additional weapons and drones, their respective power-ups will also start to show up. There will also be power-ups that can help you recover some of your lost armor.
As a heads-up, buying the battle drone is a good choice since it will deploy a drone that will automatically fire at enemies. The best thing is that even if you only upgrade it once, you can collect battle drone power-ups to unleash more battle drones on a level, and having, say, a trio of them with you can be extremely valuable! Do know that battle drones can be damaged, so you could end up quickly losing them if you’re not careful.
All the enemies that you defeat will drop resources, which are the green glowing orbs that you have to collect. If you fail a mission, you’ll get to keep half of the resources you grab. Complete a mission, and you’ll get to keep all of them. On top of that, if you destroy all enemies in a mission, you’ll also receive some bonus resources. While you should definitely spend all of them on upgrades, you should know there’s a trophy for obtaining 10,000 of them, which you should be aiming for as you complete the 15 missions that the game has to offer.
Speaking of trophies, Astro Flame: Starfighter has a full trophy list with a Platinum trophy for you to work on. The list includes 5 Silver trophies and 9 Gold trophies. You’ll need to destroy 2,500, 5,000, and 7,000 enemies, complete a level without being hit, beat the first mission, beat the first boss, complete a level with max armor, fail a mission within the first 15 seconds, ram 100 enemies, purchase your first upgrade, complete the game, collect 10,000 resources, die in a boss fight, and die in a boss fight 3 times in a row. If you need some extra help, you can check out our own Astro Flame: Starfighter Trophy Guide.
Astro Flame: Starfighter brings us a classic-style shoot ’em up with 3D graphics on PlayStation. You’ll take on 15 levels of increasing difficulty as you upgrade your spaceship with the resources you collect so that you can use bombs, battle drones, plasma waves, and more to destroy the thousands of enemies and the bosses that stand in your way. Astro Flame: Starfighter is out on PlayStation 5 with a $9.99 asking price. There’s also a PlayStation 4 version available for the same price as a separate purchase.
Disclaimer
This Astro Flame: Starfighter review is based on a PlayStation 5 copy provided by Sometimes You.
