Glidefire Review

With its flashy visuals and promising progression system, Glidefire initially seems miles ahead of other, more pedestrian mobile space shooters. But it’s all surface. What could have been hot and hand-crafted is instead cold and mechanical.

In Glidefire, players fly a spaceship down tracks while hopping between lanes. Pilots do standard stuff like gathering collectibles, avoiding hazards, and improving their vessel between missions. They can even shoot down some obstacles, although touching targets while steering is incredibly awkward.

But the game does add one intriguing idea onto this familiar base. While the final stage is an endless challenge, the first ten are not. They are finite tracks presumably plotted by developers instead of being procedurally-generated. Plus they’re pretty long and very tough, so players have to learn their intricacies to move forward. However, while these unique stages have promise, most ultimately feel indistinguishable from the randomly created tracks of other similar games. There’s no real sense of flow or purpose behind why the tracks are laid out the way they are.

And speaking of lost promise, while the colorful and geometrically dense 3D environments are certainly impressive, during the actual game they look surprisingly messy. Space station parts, satellites, and other bits of machinery blur into each other in front of the massive, glowing, interstellar backgrounds. If not for the helpful guide arrows knowing how to approach each oncoming obstacle would be a disorienting hassle. The sense of speed is great at least, but when combined with the whirring particles and flashing lightning storms, the frame rate takes frequent hits. However, even with this slight sloppiness, the visuals are still definitely Glidefire's high point.

By the end, Glidefire becomes just another 'okay' endless space shooter. But by starting with such eye-catching graphics and potentially deeper level design, it’s more disappointing that’s how it wraps up. Its only direction is downhill.