Altitude is an outstanding game, and really raises the benchmark for fast-paced indie games.
Altitude's visuals are not at all the detailed masterpieces that other independent developers seem to produce but they certainly are charming. The terrain graphics are reminiscent of those ancient two dimensional Worms games, and the aeroplane sprites share a similar colourful quaintness. Polychromatic textures address how Altitude slants towards the more leisurely casual side of gaming as opposed to focussing on hardcore competitiveness and leaves a relatively low standard for other people to design their own maps.
The single player element is not Altitude's strong point. In fact, it's a neglected expansion of Altitude's multiplayer. There are five basic training missions that will introduce you to the different game modes, controls, aeroplanes and how to fight effectively. There is also a skirmish mode, which is a basic single-player you versus bot AI match, however these a repetitive activities are not the developer's focus.
Multiplayer is where the game is competent. Dedicated servers are hosted by people in the community and you can put yourself up against anywhere from a single enemy to sixty-three! As you battle it off you advance through a mundane level progression system-you get kills or finish objectives and you're awarded experience points which accumulate until you increase a level. There's no noticeable statistic boosts for your aeroplanes, instead you're awarded with new perks and aeroplane models.
You won't be unacquainted with Altitude's perk system, it's a replica of the one implemented in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare. There have been some slight alterations: red perks change your aeroplanes weapons (and each aeroplane has its own miniature library of red perks to be unlocked), green perks affect your armour and plane's survivability and the final blue perk makes changes to energy (essentially mana or fatigue, energy determines how many shots you can fire and how long you can use your thrusters for.) It's a gracious aspect of Altitude and allows for absolute customisability, despite the limited number of perks.
The controls are outstandingly smooth and responsive. You have full command over your control layout, but by default all your controls are mapped to the mouse. You perform a dazzling loop with a flick of the mouse, adjust your momentum on a transparent slider and utilise firepower with the standard LMB, RMB and middle mouse buttons. This feature does not compliment the fast-paced action alone, it manages to be completely superior to any keyboard setup.
To give an example of some of the aforementioned aspects of Alititude, I'll use a situation I experienced:
I was flying Loopy, an agile dogfighter, swiftly manoeuvring and circumnavigating various objects - icy walls, hostile aeroplanes and a giant statue of Tux - and I soon started following an enemy fighter, who was determined to outrun me. Shortly after realising I wasn't giving up, he attempted a risky look-to-loop stunt to escape my barrage of lock-on missiles. I mimicked his skilful aerobatic dodge and our pursuit turned circular. To stop our chase continuing, I banked sharply and finished him off with a final missile.
With my victory came another aggressive force. In doing the loop-to-loop stunt my velocity had dramatically dipped and the aeroplane stalled. With my control of the vehicle stripped from me, Loopy immediately fell into a steep descent. Unable to fix the aeroplane I crashed to the ground, Conscious of my second perk, which increased the power of my thrusters, I tried desperately to get off of the ground without luck and an enemy bomber flew downwards, after spotting my conspicuous firefight and landed a bomb directly upon my immobile aircraft.
Unfortunately, downfalls coexist with Altitude's brilliance. It has a serious lack of game modes; if played in continuous succession, Altitude will begin to feel old. There's only free-for-all, a "destroy the enemy base" game type and a ball game, that resembles football strongly. Repetitiveness really hurts any game, and in spite of the addictive nature of Altitude, that resplendent awesomeness makes a fatal transition to boring déjà vu.
Nevertheless, and to conclude, Altitude is a complete package. It's like purchasing a cheap gift, opening the recently delivered parcel and gasping as you realise there's much more to it. Altitude captures and improves a pleasant and relatively undeveloped genre of gaming. Altitude has successfully renovated my personal opinions on the direction of indie gaming - it is polished and everything I could ask for..
8/10