Another Day, Another Aery: This Time Relaxed but Half-Finished
Aery is by far the most confounding game series that I regularly play. There’s dozens of Aerys on Xbox, but each one feels determined to neither improve or learn from the games that came before. It’s a series that – if we were being rude, and it seems we are – is in a kind of stasis. It clearly makes money, but it doesn’t put that money to good use.
In struts Aery – Calm Horizon, which tinkers with the Aery format ever-so-slightly, but mostly fits that opening paragraph to a tee. It’s a bird-like regurgitation of everything that has come before, and any new ideas it has are ill-advised. Which means it represents what almost every Aery release represents: another chance to play the same old levels, with 1000G as your prize.
Aery Between The Ears
Aery – Calm Horizon’s big idea is that it’s the calm, pressureless version of Aery. Text screens inform you that it is designed to be played one level per session, and you can pause whenever you want. It sounds like a fine concept until you remember that Aery has done this four times before with the Calm Mind sub-series. This is nothing new.
How that wellness surfaces in the game is that Aery – Calm Horizon doesn’t want you to worry about where the next feather is coming from. We haven’t counted, but we suspect that there are roughly 100 feathers in each level, and you only need to collect 40 of them. Those feathers are also visible from the very start. You don’t need to chain the feathers in a particular sequence: you just enter an arena, see plenty of feathers about, and glide soothingly to them in any order.
As is customary for the Aery series, the flying is perfectly fine. The parrot moves forward without any input, but you can speed it up by holding A or handbrake-turn to catch a wayward feather. There is a reason why I seem to play every Aery that comes out, and it’s this robust core. You can mostly play Aery games with your brain switched off, accumulating feathers and achievements, and that’s meditative in an odd way.
Less Pointing the Way, More Leaving you Alone to Play
I appreciate the relaxed approach to goals in Aery – Calm Horizon. In previous games, it was always possible to get lost looking for the next feather. It’s never a good feeling to be one feather away from completing a level, when that feather is beyond the field of view. Too often, we would head in one direction, only to find that it’s the wrong direction. That is never a problem here. Completing a level is an absolute cinch.
But it’s also too much of a cinch. It’s entirely possible to see only a third of the level, because you’re hoovering up feathers in the opening areas. I’m the kind of obsessive player who can’t leave a feather behind, and that led to odd moments where I double-backed on myself repeatedly and found that the level ended before I’d ever really gone anywhere. Which is likely a ‘me’ problem, but may be a ‘you’ problem too, if you are similarly inclined.
I’m not overly taken with the feather placement, either. They are placed in such a way that you couldn’t possibly gather them in one fly-by. They are clustered but offset, meaning that you always have to take another run at collecting them. Which damages the ‘calm’ feelings, in my view: if Aery – Calm Horizon really wanted you to play as you wanted to play, why does it force you to spiral around in the same areas?
It Wouldn’t be Aery Without Bugs
Aery – Calm Horizon is also plagued by the series’ overarching issue: it’s so rough around the edges that it can feel like you’re being pecked by birds.
Aery – Calm Horizon imports levels wholesale from its other titles. We spotted a few from Owlen and the Whispering Woods, for example. But those levels don’t always suit Aery – Calm Horizon. More than once, we would head down a tunnel, only to find that there are no feathers and we crash into an invisible wall. These dead-ends haven’t been dealt with. They’ve been left in there as flappy appendages.
It also includes some odd hotspots (again from Owlen and the Whispering Woods) which, when flown into, causes a terraforming of the landscape. Huge mountains and towns shudder into view. It’s a fantastic idea in theory but a terrible one in execution. About 50% of the time, you won’t see the terraforming as it’s behind you. The animations and VFX are also absolutely blinding. You can feel like you’re having some kind of episode when you fly into them, and they feel like you’re doing something wrong rather than right. That feeling is underlined by the terraforming itself. They tend to hide and obstruct feathers.
Only for Committed Aery Players, and Perhaps we Should be Committed
There is, at least, no story getting in the way. Aery – Calm Horizon is entirely focused on wellness, which means no room for the high-concept narratives that EpiXR like to crowbar in. We’re mostly thankful. Aery – Calm Horizon also gets brownie points for its soundtrack. It’s not as good as the one that has been attached to every Aery game for the last six years, but it’s peaceful and different.
I’ve been in the habit of finishing an Aery game and wondering why I keep playing them, and Aery – Calm Horizon is no different. I appreciated the relaxed approach to feather-finding, but it’s not enough to salvage another repackaged set of levels that have been approached half-heartedly.
If you are trapped in a never-ending loop of playing Aery games then this isn’t painful. If you’re a sane individual who has better things to do, well, you can give Aery – Calm Horizon a miss.
Important Links
Aery – Calm Horizon Revisits Beautiful Series Landscapes – https://www.thexboxhub.com/aery-calm-horizon-revisits-beautiful-series-landscapes/
Buy from the Xbox Store – https://www.xbox.com/en-gb/games/store/aery-calm-horizon/9n5s4xrsfxsp
