Lunar Lander Beyond Review

Classic Atari games are getting a lot of love lately, and next up is the unique Lunar Lander in Lunar Lander Beyond. Keeping the same tough gameplay but adding in a narrative and a few other bells and whistles, this reimagining is a solid blast of nostalgia while also giving younger players the chance to jump in without scouring eBay for a retro console or arcade unit.

Those who’ve played the 1979 (and no, not even I was born then) original, or one of the many ports over the years, will be right at home here. The feel of the gameplay, particularly with the starter ship, is pretty much spot on, its slow, cumbersome turning and accelerating taking a bit of getting used to. Managing fuel and health is a constant battle, and fine tuning the movement will use up a lot of the former (and probably the latter if you play like me).

Truth be told, I’ve never really been a huge fan of Lunar Lander. It’s exacting pace and feel just never gelled with me and the same can be said here – at least at first. I found myself slamming into walls or drifting past items constantly, or zig-zagging around them as I over corrected with each thrust of the engine.

It’s certainly not as approachable as some of Atari’s other recent efforts, but the reward is in getting to grips with the floaty controls, and skilled players will find moving their craft about akin to a delicate ballet dance. I’m not one of those players, mind; my craft looking more like a pinball than a graceful dancer.

Lunar Lander Beyond goes to some effort to ingratiate new players though. Missions are short affairs, and on the lower difficulties can be retried either from the beginning or one of several checkpoints throughout. In addition, the ships can be granted up to three power ups, from a simple boost to an impervious shield, a warp, tractor beam, and more. These aren’t essential but are welcome tools to help get us (well, me) through a level.

We also have access to several pilots, with more unlocked as we play. These come with their own random perks like more health, less fuel consumption, doubling XP etc. As they level up they are given an additional random perk as well. My first pilot became something of a machine by the end of the game, with a well-rounded set of skills that meant even a failure would still yield some benefit.

We can use currency collected in the levels to re-roll the last perks for a pilot, but this is exorbitantly expensive and something I never really felt the need to do. Of better use of the currency is fixing a pilots mental health, something I needed to do a lot.

Each impact of the ship sees a Stress bar slowly fill in. Let it get to its upper limits and bizarre, music-video-style imagery will flash on and off screen like something out of Beavis and Butthead Do America. Distracting enough on it’s own, the screen also flitters about with some chromatic aberration and filters. Let the bar fully fill and a hallucinogenic elephant will chase us down to kill us. We can collect red and blue pills to lower the insanity in the moment, but after missions it’s either let the pilot rest for a few days or pay huge chunks of cash for a quick fix.

It’s an interesting swerve on an already hard game, and using one of the thrust-based ships makes it harder to deal with. Again, I found myself swinging by the critical red pill many times, often into the path of the elephant.

There are four ships on offer to unlock, and thankfully there is what I shall refer to as the ‘baby-mode’ one that made the game far more forgiving (and enjoyable for me) – the Hoverfly. This one eschews the thrust and turn mechanics for simply pointing the left analogue stick in a direction and moving. It’s not the fastest (thought pilot perks can help this aspect) but for traversing the levels I found this to be where the game started to win me over. It was far more natural to swing around the tight caverns with this ship and because it stops on a dime I was far less prone to flying into walls (though, not entirely preventing it).

The final unlocked ship, Mantis, was a solid second choice with its slower speed but more precise turning, though it was still a hassle to use especially when cornered or being chased by something.

The levels themselves range from quick sprints to labyrinthian affairs, the only guide being a small arrow on the mini-map. Some felt a bit too drawn out, but overall the pace is kept up nicely enough. Objectives aren’t exactly varied though, with most being ‘fly there, land, then fly back again’ with small twists.

The surrounding tale is what sets this apart from the previous entries, and while the actual story is kept pretty simple (a huge Event happens that causes disruption in the Galaxy, and we must figure out what caused it), I did enjoy the writing and Saturday morning cartoon style cinematics. It’s a decent attempt to bring a bit more to the arcade action, and being fully voiced was appreciated too.

Conclusion

I found my time playing Lunar Lander Beyond to be good fun in short bursts, usually in between something a bit meatier. At around 5 hours to complete it doesn’t outstay its welcome, though there are harder difficulties (and permadeath) to consider should you really want to test yourself. If you’ve not gelled with the previous releases then this make good strides to win you over, though the same tricky controls and movement are present as ever.