Acecraft: Sky Hero

I like the art style, the music, and the Tom and Jerry Collab. I like the mechanics for partying like the Cuphead game. I like that it's not a Cuphead game (has nothing to do with cups or platforming). It's a flight/ shooter game from the birds-eye view. I like the story. I like the variety of enemies and attacks. I like the different projectiles. I like that, unlike Cuphead, your boss battles have a health bar. I don't like the tediousness of the Tom and Jerry collect cheese levels. There feels like there is just enough cheese, but not very forgiving. I don't believe the multiplayer is multiplayer enough. It would be cool if it were also in the story mode, not just the special events. I don't like the pay-to-play aspect of the game. Never have. I don't like the repetitiveness of the music. I would like to have more customized settings to switch the song. I don't particularly like the 2 of 2 ads. Usually, games have one ad, but two back-to-back is crazy. I don't like that it can crash, but I love that once I restart the app, I can return to the spot where I paused. I don't like that it runs only online and would like the story mode to be offline. Can't game on flights without wifi. I like the attention to detail and animation. I like the characters. I don't like how many buttons, nooks, and crannies there are in the app.

This game has some solid core-gameplay; however, it loses stars because it is full of grubby mobile bloat. The core-gameplay is so much fun. The controls are intuitive, and it is super easy to get into, while still being challenging at the same time. The aesthetic is wonderful, with excellent art direction and animations. The sound design also fits well to the game’s style. The game really loses me when it comes to the monetization: Energy that makes you either wait, watch ads, or spend money to keep playing. Tons of items that all do essentially the same thing with various levels of “rarity” that simply increase the buffs given, encouraging you to spend more money to unlock better items. There are also too many menus, with a bunch of random “collectibles” that don’t really seem to do much except convince your brain that you need to keep playing to fill the catalog up. These predatory features that are implemented to get people to spend more time and money in the game actually seem to do the opposite for me. I get frustrated and overwhelmed by the amount of pop-ups signifying that I have new unlocks. I think I’ve spent more time in the menus than I have actually playing the game, which is a bit of a shame. All that being said, this game still slaps. It holds up extremely well when you put it against most of the other offerings available on the app store. I just wish we could go back to the days of buying the app once, and being able to just play it like any other game, but times have changed.