Astro Boy Flight Review

There’s a word that keeps bouncing around my head as I play Astro Boy Flight. Rather appropriately, that word is ‘repetitive’. It sums up this endless 2D shooter, based around the famous Japanese manga character, oh so very well. A few seconds of Astro Boy Flight and you’ll see everything the game offers, with little there to mix things up later on.

You glide through the skies, all via a portrait perspective, using one finger to move Astro Boy around. Shooting is done automatically, so your sole method of interaction is via this one finger. Waves of enemies come at you, so you have to line up quickly to shoot them down. This isn’t R-Type though, so it’s not exactly challenging stuff. Instead, you’re more likely to fail because you got bored for a moment and stopped paying attention.

Every now and then a boss battle will emerge, requiring you to take a bit more action. Bosses tend to fire more projectiles at you, but each of them gives you a brief warning beforehand as to where they’re going to go. They do, at least, break up the monotony a bit by giving you something else to do.

Astro Boy Flight tries to infuse excitement via its upgrade system, allowing you to have assistance bots help you out as well as increase your firepower. This is essential if you want to get particularly far in the game, so it’s unfortunate that the grind to get there is so long-winded. Astro Boy Flight isn’t generous with dishing out coins, and when combined with an energy system restricting how often you can play, you can see why there are so many in-app purchases around.

That wouldn’t be so bad if Astro Boy Flight was fun to grind, but it’s not. It’s all too samey and tedious, and whether you play for five minutes or five hours, it’s roughly the same experience.