Fun, but unfinished - and the original is still better. If the idea intrigues you and you want to support the developer, look for the game "AaaaaAAaaaAAAaaAAAAaAAAAA!!! for the Awesome" instead which costs about as much but is much more complete and fun. And if you liked that, get "AaAaAA!!! - A Reckless Disregard for Gravity" as well. But this title just ain't it.
I've been a huge fan of the original Aaaaa... games and was excited to hear that the Remastered would be released. I was even more excited that I could receive a free copy of the game when I owned one of the other games (which I did both). Thanks, Dejobaan, I really appreciate that!
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm for the game started to dwindle the more I played. Firstly, this game is called "Remastered", but I honestly couldn't tell if it's the original levels reskinned, a Remake or if it should have better been marketed as a full fledged sequel instead. The art style has completely switched from a colorful, weird, slightly punkish look to fully cyberpunk neon. If you have any photosensitivity issues, please stay away from this game, as it has, quite unnecessarily, introduced a lot of flashing lights which can be nowhere adjusted in its rather sparse options menu. It does look cool, though, but I had grown quite fond of the original art style.
Secondly, the controls were changed from the original to a more mouse centric control scheme, probably adapted from 1..2..3.. Kick It! Instead of using WASD to steer in the air and the mouse to rotate, now you move with your mouse and rotate with Q and E. I honestly preferred the old control scheme, as it incentivized looking around the map when falling, but maybe that's just because I have played the original so much. Instead of instantly dying when hitting an obstacle from above without activating your parachute, you now back up a few meters if you still have your extra hit point left. This doesn't seem to cause much penalty - quite the opposite, it allows you to go for missing scoring plates instead - so I am not sure what the intention of this mechanic is. Maybe it is intended to be exploited? I don't know!
The music appears to be licensed stock music - different music from the original - which does its job, but sometimes does not really fit to the level's vibe. The tracks are not loopable, so if you, for whatever reason, spend longer than the duration of the music in a level, it finishes off into awkward silence and then repeats from its beginning. Some levels are also fairly short, so the music barely gets through its intro part before you are already done. Music tracks shuffle with each attempt, so when you repeat the same level, you will not hear the same music again, which I find mildly confusing, but it's no big deal.
As an audio producer myself however, I wonder if it is really this hard nowadays to find affordable and capable video game music composers who would die to make a soundtrack to your weird niche game. Good for Dejobaan they did not exploit anyone, but I feel like there might have been options to negotiate a fair deal for some cool custom made music by an aspiring composer. Sound effects appear to be stock sound effects as well, some the same as the original, which adds a nice recognition value.
The score balancing feels extremely arbitrary. I've casually 5-starred every level at the start, to the point where I feared the game was bugged. Then I suddenly hit a wall and was barely able to get more than 2 stars for a few levels. This is a good thing at first, because I like me some challenge, but this game makes it really, really hard to understand how to improve your route for a better score. Unlike the old Aaaa.... games, there is not even a final score list to help you evaluate your route and make adjustments, like if you should go for some extra kisses or farm hugs instead. This version also has a multiplier feature that is important to keep up for collecting score plates and spectator moves, but goes a bit against the way I thought the original was supposed to be played. New levels continue to feel unbalanced. Sometimes I unlock a new level, die before finishing it but still get all 5 stars, sometimes I have no idea how I'm supposed to grind out an extra 100k to even achieve 4 stars.
The worst part is, probably also adapted from 1...2...3... Kick It!, this game just feels extremely unfinished. I do not know if the team ran out of time and/or money and just needed to get it out, but there is just so much jank and unfinished content, it really baffles me.
The level select menu for once is the bare minimum. The old games had cool animated 3D cubes forming a cylinder out of all the levels and fun bonus material (I am also unironically a big fan of the meditation!), the new one is a barely functioning level select screen with an abyssmal UX and no audio feedback at all. The game (as of initial release) DOES NOT HAVE A FRAMERATE CAP! and goes to unlimited regions, unless you manually set a cap in your GPU settings. When you want to grind a level for points, there is no "restart" button, you always need to go the extra step through "back to menu" for a reset, which gets really annoying really fast. The game does not seem to store your personal best times but instead challenges you to beat the score from your previous attempt. So when your PB of a level is 438,000 but you just did a practice/routing jump and got 345,000 instead, the game will now say that your target score to beat for this level is 345,000.
But, perhaps worst of all, whenever you finish a level - either by dying or landing - the screen just goes black and shows you the total score. No audio cue, no visual feedback, nothing, just the score and stars. I am not even sure it counts the bonus you are supposed to get by landing in the ring, as there is, as mentioned, no score list like it used to. In the original (and for the Awesome, for that matter, which I would say is the actual Remaster) it felt a lot more rewarding and satisfying to finish a jump. It also felt like you needed to properly time your parachute, as deploying it too late would still cause you to die in the end, which I was not able to reproduce in this version yet.
I'm sorry for being so negative, but this game is quite disappointing to me, so far. I just hope Dejobaan hears some feedback and the game sells well enough to warrant a bunch of patches and updates to the game; I will update my review accordingly.
I do believe that 10 bucks is a fair price, even for this unfinished mess and there is some genuine fun to be had here! However, if you like the idea of BASE jumping and want an a bit more "complete" experience and feel like supporting Dejobaan, get Aaaa... A Reckless Disregard for Gravity or Aaaaa.... for the Awesome instead. Even though these have DLCs that can no longer be obtained (for reasons incomprehensible to me), they still feel more like finished, fun and balanced games.
