Welcome to Granaria, a flying city in the clouds. Meet Amelia - a young pilot and fisherwoman wishing to reach the abundant worlds edge. Sky fishing became a really dangerous job, with pirates roaming around everywhere. So start your engines, arm your airplane and get ready to make the catch of a lifetime. Airheart combines free roaming, twin stick gameplay with a beautiful, colourful world. Defeat your enemies, salvage their scrap and reuse it to craft new parts for your airplane. Build and try out over 40 weapons and airplane parts. Combine their abilities to become the pirates worst nightmare. Or just have some fun with your enemies and use your harpoon to disarm, unshield, swing them around or drag them back home to disassemble them...

Airheart: Tales of Broken Wings is a diesel-punk action game set in the vibrant floating city of Granaria. Players step into the shoes of Amelia, a young pilot who aspires to one day reach the world’s edge and capture the infamous Sky Whale. Amelia must take to the skies in her customisable plane – soaring higher and higher through a vertical environment as she explores vivid landscapes, partakes in a spot of sky-fishing and taking on rival aircraft in tight twin-stick combat.

Because the game resets if you crash your plane, it's advisable to take your time and capture all fish and destroy all enemy pirate planes before progressing to the next level. And if it's looking like your health is getting a little too low, make sure you quickly head back to base. Once you crash you'll have to start all over again (which is intensely frustrating) - which makes me wonder how deep the game really is? Tactics like this smell of short gameplay and this is certainly one way of stretching it out.

However, should you crash and burn, you have the chance to try and crash land on your HQ... This is probably something you should practice on the earlier levels so that you don't get caught out later on. It's not easy to control your plane when this happens and I found it more luck than skill if I managed to hit the base.

Back at your HQ you can customise the look of your plane as well as add additional weapons and protection. The look of the plane is pretty much pointless as it's so small in the actual gameplay that it's only the colour that you'll be able to notice changes.

The control system also takes some getting used to. You use one control stick to change the direction of the plane, and the other to aim your main weapon... This can take a little while to master, depending on whether your brain is wired up that way... but stick with it and you'll eventually master it.

Yes the graphics are cute and cheerful, but the one sticking point for me was having to start all over again each time you die. Also, I wasn't overly impressed that the developers used conceptual artwork (rather than actual in game footage) to promote the "screen shots" on the Xbox store. So, be warned, the images in this review are not images from the game.

6

Nick Smithson