Air Diver

"It's a good little pseudo-3D shooter"

Air Diver is an air combat ''flight sim'' which uses a first-person perspective. Although it may seem like a flight simulator at first, it is not - at least, not really. It's just a simple shooter which dons a first-person perspective.
The game however is pretty fun to play and can have you engaged for a good couple of hours, if you can master the controls and have enough patience to soldier through the many times you'll be shot down.

GRAPHICS - 7.5
The graphics in the game are definitely typical of the old-school pre-1992 shooters for the Genesis. However, the Air Diver (that is the plane you fly) has very good, eye-catching mechanical design and the cockpit looks pretty cool too. The enemies don't look too bad either, when you get close to them in midflight.

SOUND AND MUSIC - 8
The sound effects are nothing spectacular - just your average 16-bit synthesized whooshes, blasts, etc. But the music is very engaging and well composed, complete with goofy boss tracks. I'd say the music is good.

CONTROL - 6
Controlling your plane can sometimes be a chore, especially in the higher levels where enemies become decidedly missile-happy and you have to avoid their fire every second. You can roll in the air and do loop-de-loops in order to avoid enemy fire and to get behind bogeys who are taking you to pieces from behind, but the controls feel somewhat sluggish and don't really seem or feel like they're moving the plane that much. Experienced flight-sim players used to real 3D flight sims may find the controls difficult to master at first, but novices can quickly pick up on how the controls work.

GAMEPLAY - 7
You have two weapons: a dual ''vulcan'' chaingun which never runs out of ammo, and seeking missiles which can only be launched when locked onto an enemy plane. However, the vulcan bullets move in a straight line regardless of the direction the plane is moving or turning, and the missiles are ineffective if the enemy rushes offscreen. Actually, the straightline vulcan gun can be used to your advantage: you can easily sweep your fire and hit multiple enemies with it.

DIFFICULTY - 9 (There may be some spoilers here, approach with caution!)
This game is very difficult! After taking out hordes of bogies, you'll have to fight an ''ace fighter'' which is very difficult to kill and can maneuver much better than you can. When you do shoot him down, you'll go onto the real boss of the level, which is usually armed with a (cheap) energy weapon which will more often than not kill you unless you blow it up first thing. Also, your plane can only be damaged three times by normal fire (that is, not by missiles or by the energy balls bosses shoot at you) before it is shot down. When your plane gets its third bit of body damage, you crash and burn. Fortunately though you have five lives, so you can quickly get back into the action. When you lose all five lives you'll have to start over to where you were before you started the campaign you lost, fortunately you don't lose your progress up to there.

REPLAY VALUE - 7
Air Diver has okay replay value, I guess. At first, the gameplay will be so engaging it will warrant endless re-tries for a while, until you beat it. When you beat it you may or may not want to go through all that trouble again.

BUY OR RENT - Rent first, buy later
Air Diver might not appeal to every gamer; rather, those interested should really rent it first to see if they really like it or not. It is a good game though, so those who rent it probably won't be disappointed.

OVERALL - 8

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 11/20/01, Updated 11/20/01