AER Memories of Old

Genre: Open-World 3D Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

AER is a family-friendly Open-World 3D Platformer with some light Puzzle elements originally released on multiple platforms in 2017 and brought to the Nintendo Switch in 2019. This is a game set in a world of floating sky islands and ancient ruins where the player takes the role of a woman who can transform into a bird, traveling on a pilgrimage to multiple shrines which soon becomes a quest to stave off a looming threat upon her world.

The presentation here is a really mixed bag. The game uses low-poly 3D characters and environments to build its open-world,and while it is stylistically attractive, on a technical level it has severe problems, with shuddering framerates, lots of pop-in, and aliasing. It’s disappointing to see a game with such low-fidelity visuals still struggle to perform well. At the very least I can say that this game’s relaxing soundtrack is quite nice.

As for the gameplay itself, AER is a light and simple affair for the most part – there’s little here to challenge players, no life bar or risk of death despite the empty void underneath the player in the game’s open-world overworld. Players will enter numerous shrines on their journey where they’ll find puzzles to solve, though these puzzles aren’t really challenging either. In fact, the only real challenge present here is one of the game’s larger flaws – it’s often unclear exactly where you’re supposed to go next.

The low challenge level in itself isn’t necessarily a problem – there have been great Platformers that have used simple and easy gameplay to deliver powerful audiovisual experiences, a fascinating world to explore, or a wonderful story. Games like Journey, Gris, and Rime come to mind. Unfortunately, as I’ve noted, the audiovisual experience here is somewhat lacking, the story in this game (all delivered in text) isn’t very compelling, and the world is interesting but not compelling enough to make it an end unto itself. I will say that the mechanics for flying here are really enjoyable, but the lack of any strong goals or challenge in maneuvering during flight make this mechanic feel wasted.

All of these complaints are not to say that AER is bad, but it lacks a real, compelling reason to keep playing it. It’s short 3-4 run time has a few nice experiences, but overall these aren’t nearly as powerful as other games that try for this sort of thing, and are weighed down by the unclear goal structure. If you can find this at a good discount, this might make for a nice brief experience, but definitely don’t expect much from this game.

tl;dr – AER is a family-friendly Open-World 3D Platformer where players can transform into a bird to explore floating islands in the sky. Flying in this game is fun, but the short run time, as well as the lack of any sort of challenge, a compelling story, or even a captivating aesthetic make it hard to recommend this game.

Grade: C

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