Rogue Flight slapped me in the face with a retro anime-inspired trailer mere weeks ago, and now it’s here (or nearly, the launch date is 25th October) on PS5, PC, Switch and XBSX. It’s a blast from the past with some good old-school arcade-inspired shooting ‘em up. Think of something like Afterburner. Or minigames from countless other titles including Bayonetta and Kingdom Hearts? Please don’t tune-out at my Gummi Ship allusion, Rogue Flight is different!
Primarily, Rogue Flight is a 3D third-person space shooter with your view set behind your overpowered starfighter as waves of enemies and giant bosses fly at you. The screenshots may not sell it but this game is dripping in style and nostalgia like a sopping wet flip phone… It probably doesn’t need to be soaked for that analogy to work, does it?
The 80s space anime vibes are everywhere despite most of the actual animation being in the prologue. “Cell Shaded” has become cliché lately but there are some nice blocks of colour and a kind of retro/CRT filter that shifts the entire tone of the visuals. These screenshots were a joy to capture but you really need to see this thing in motion, take a look at the Launch Date Trailer.
The gameplay itself has a cinematic quality with an incredible sense of speed and evasive manoeuvres that bend and shift the light in slow motion. Enemy ships and debris zip past as you fly over lava and through ice clouds or ion storms. The occasionally massive asteroid or screen-filling dreadnought make appearances too and I love the sense of scale.
With enough upgrades and a low enough difficulty setting your main concern will be keeping your combo going while you fire indiscriminately but on higher difficulty or starting with just a cannon, things are different. You’ll be wanting to look for openings and line up your shots while using your dodge roll to evade and parry physical shots. One special manoeuvre blasts you forward while deflecting most projectiles and the others sweep your craft across the screen taking out anything caught in the shockwave.
You can also suck up some ammo using your singularity drive. Each of these can leave you open to attack though so keep evading and be ready on the parry button. You should also use your lock on missiles to help extend your combo, as a high enough combo restores your shield. This all gives the game a rhythm and more tactical depth than I expected. But also it’s really fun to just obliterate waves of drones and the like. The blistering pace can sometimes grind to a halt if you run up against a boss with nothing but your default cannon but with some luck and the right upgrades you’ll be shredding through them in seconds.
Character portraits pop up to communicate with your fully realised anime protagonist MC, including a “Space Daddy” commanding office voiced by the one and only DarinDe Paul (he’s not given a lot to do but I would listen to him all day) and (I guess now I committed to the Space Daddy bit) a “Space Mommy” scientist with a fancy accent voiced by Jess Nahikian. The overall plot is pretty standard for this kind of thing – one ship against an alien/machine armada kinda deal. But there is a certain poignancy created by having multiple endings.
After the first few missions you basically pick a route which leads you to different stages, so it’s not super deep but does give you at least four different playthroughs. However, there is an overlap in the stages used.
Once you’ve beaten those story playthroughs you can always try again on higher difficulties. I counted five options which was great to see because quite often these arcade shooters are exactly what I want to play but outclass my skills by the third stage. There is an extra thrill from the higher difficulties.
After you’re done with those, then there’s “Rogue Flite” mode (see what they did there?). One life for the entire run, randomisation and tougher enemies, there’s even a more challenging version to unlock. I was a little disappointed it’s not a full-on roguelite mode which lets you collect upgrades as the difficulty ramps up. Things don’t quite scale as I’d like though and once you have the highest upgrades the game loses some of its challenge, although I guess upgrades are a choice. The different modes and high score chasing over different difficulties can only go so far, a fleshed-out roguelite mode would have really boosted replayability.
You can upgrade your ship between missions but you get one aero upgrade and one tactical. At least at first, this limits you to choosing whether to upgrade speed or manoeuvrability or guns over missiles. At first, I was confused by the upgrade points but it doesn’t work like a shop or skill tree. You gain points in particular aspects the more you use them (you get MIS points for collecting missile ammo for example) and each upgrade has a point threshold before you can equip it. There are plenty of options but I wish there were more and a slightly easier-to-view list.
Eventually, you’ll unlock upgrade packages that add extra effects to one weapon and later you can boost several aspects or weapons with one upgrade for a feeling of power, progression and almost fanatical devo… and greater adaptability.
Rogue Flight’s full-on anime opening even comes with its own song to get you fully hyped up for your thrilling heroics in space and the background music continues to drive gameplay forward. This is a game that wants to be played loud with all the zaps and booms ringing in your ears as you speed past asteroids and space junk. Even the sound effects are nostalgic with a siren that reminds me of Star Wars and some ricochet noises that’d be at home in a Timesplitters game. Oh, and you can’t tell me that the post-apocalyptic story intro doesn’t give Terminator 2? Keep completing runs and you’ll unlock Retro mode which lets you play with a full PCM soundtrack, which you can also listen to in the sound test menu, classic.
The only complaints I’ve really had are that some of the environments and weapons make it rather difficult to see what’s going on, it’s not often and is generally resolved by just murdering everything that moves. That and there’s a certain element of luck in which weapons you unlock in your first couple of runs which can make some boss battles a bit of a drag. I imagine the vibration and adaptive triggers could put some people off too but they can be disabled and feel pretty intense if you’re happy to keep them on. There’s also a setting to turn off the flashing effects for anyone who’s sensitive.
I want to give special mention to The Arrow, your tricked-out ride and the potential saviour of all humanity. This is one of the sexiest starships in modern gaming. With classic R-type stylings but in full 3D, design elements recall Last Starfighter, Colony Wars or Galactica’s Vipers. The Arrow has the coolest space plane designs from things as diverse as the Ring Raiders animated series and Disney’s Buzz Lightyear movie. It even changes configuration depending on which upgrades you pick!
The game doesn’t shy away from giving you a good look at the ship in and out of gameplay either. You can even get some nice clean images using the pause menu to grab a screenshot, although I wish there was some control of the camera for this. Plus there are over 100 livery designs to pick from, simple but very cool, I spent time looking through each of them and switching things up before each run. I even found Angry Penguin in the callsign options! I was a bit surprised that the liveries didn’t need unlocking through gameplay but I don’t hate having all the options available from the outset.
You know a game is dedicated to the arcade nostalgia when it references Last Starfighter and Terminator and insists on referring to an aileron roll as a barrel roll even though we all know better by now. Given developer Truant Pixel’s history with VR games, I’m a bit disappointed there is no VR support, but there is a first-person option if you’re wanting an immersion boost. There’s even a whole wireframe art style for the tutorial, pure nostalgia, but I’d love to have seen some MGS style VR missions built around this too.
It only took me around 10 hours to get through the story on default difficulty but I was hooked the entire. It’s also only £14.99, a reasonable price for some of the most fun I’ve had in a spaceship since Star Wars Squadrons. I don’t know the last time a game was described as “pulse-pounding, edge-of-your-seat action” – probably the ’90s – but Rogue Flight makes that description its own, I just wish there was more of it.
Now, excuse me, I’ve got to go satiate this urge to watch Macross, Space Battleship Yamato and Cowboy Bebop.
Platforms: PS5, PC, Switch and XBSX
Developers: Truant Pixel
Publishers: Perp Games
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