Just a quick one today! Altitude is a self described ‘Fast paced aerial action game’, which is quite an apt summary really. The focus of the game is multi-player where you and a number of buddies pilot one of five different planes, of which there are two variants of each featuring different weapon load-outs, in an attempt to either take out the enemy fighters or deliver a package from their base to the enemy base. Oddly the package seems to explode on contact, damaging their base. Why would they try to deliver explosive devices in such a dangerous fashion?
One of the interesting draws of the game is that success in either dogfighting or playing payload paperboy yields XP, which is used to either unlock the planes for use or one of a number of ‘perks’ which can be customised on aircraft to confer various bonuses. I’m personally a sucker for any kind of persistant elements in games, especially multiplayer action games so this is definitely a plus for me. The frame-work holding it all together is fairly swish too, with an in-game friends system including a group chat function if you’d like to plan things out in advance, or a drop-in function if you just want to dive into a friends game and howl lead through the skies as quick as you can.
The game strikes me as overall a very nice product. It doesn’t quite set itself apart from the pack, but it does provide a very complete package that seems well supported with updates handled by the game on booting. There’s a demo available on the site, as well as the full version for $20 (both Linux and Mac machines are supported too), with demo access restricting you to only two planes and two perks though otherwise it allows you to play just the same as anyone else online. It’s well worth a playthrough with its quickly gratifying pick-up-and-play style, and to further sweeten the deal the full version will be unlocked for everyone this coming weekend to get a full taste of the product. With that, there’s no reason not to give it a chance. To the skies!