After Burner Climax review

Like drift-racer OutRun before it, After Burner is the latest Sega classic to get an HD remake and a release on PSN. Out of the two, OutRun Online Arcade is still the one to go for – there’s much more bang for your buck there. After Burner Climax features a reworked version of the Arcade mode, which – despite looking lovely in HD and being incredibly satisfying to play – only amounts to about ten minutes of fun. Sure, you can change some variables in the main Arcade by fiddling with EX options (get a bigger targeting reticule, more credits, an auto-gun and so on), but if anything that makes your play-throughs shorter.

Elsewhere, there’s a Score Attack mode that enables you to upload your scores to online leaderboards, but that’s pretty much it. We’d liked to have seen more substance here to go with the new style and, as such, can’t quite recommend it for the somewhat steep price, unless you really, really love After Burner.

Apr 23, 2010