I bought this game back around the Steam Christmas Sale 2009 for about 50% off. Sadly, I let it sit for a while and it wasn’t until some of my friends bought it within the last few months that I really got to appreciate this wonderful game.
Two gaming geeks were sick of the mainstream games being no fun when some began removing features. They also happened to be folks who love games of classic nostalgia. Erik Measure and Karl Sabo wanted something reminiscent of the games the loved but remixed with a little bit of retro and playability of something very modern. The resulting fusion merges the “class” system of Team Fortress 2 and a touch of Call of Duty 4’s perk system, but with a smattering of retro 2D by animating the game as a side scrolling plane shooter game (think Gradius/R-Type with a faster pace).
The game has a tutorial to orient you to how to play the game. After that, the game is cut and dry while throwing you to explore servers and play. Much like the Call of Duty series games, you initially start with the “weakest” plane/weapons. As you perform well in the games, your gamer profile will level up. Leveling up is done by killing others, winning games, or providing game winning tactics. Of course with gaining levels, you gain more perks and eventually more planes.
To gain experience, you need to gain experience points (XP for short) from the different game modes. For the available modes, you have Team Deathmatch (TDM), Team Base Destruction (TBD), Plane Ball (Ball), Free For All (FFA), 1-Life Demolition (1DE), 1-Life Deathmatch (1DM), 1-Life Team Base Destruction (1BD). TDM is your basic team deathmatch mode where the teams have to hit to the kill limit or when time is up. TBD has two sub-maps types; shared bomb maps or team bombs maps. Shared bomb maps have 1 just bomb and the teams have to fight for the pay load to drop the bomb on to the opposing team’s base until the base is destroyed. Team Bombs are a race against time as both teams are given bombs and it is a competition to get the other base destroyed.
Plane Ball ends up more like a game of football, but with the ability to use your guns on your planes to kill the ball carrier. The objective of Ball is much like football, bring the ball to the goal, hit the score limit or until the time limit has been reached. FFA is just like any first-person shooter, an open killing field. 1DE is much akin to Counter-Strike’s detonation mode where a “terrorist” team sets up a bomb on the defender’s base and the defender’s either must diffuse the bomb or kill the opposing team. Much like it’s Counter-Strike cousin, every player in 1DE has 1 life and players become spectators on death. 1DM is a deathmatch remix with each player having 1 life each and being a reminiscent reminder for the nostalgic Counter-Strike fan. 1BD is another Counter-Strike style remix on Base Destruction with 1 life per player. Each player will find their niche with the game modes. With the different planes and perk load-outs in the mix, this can make for a unique gaming experience.
There used to be an embeded media player here, but it doesn't work anymore. We blame the Tumbeasts.
Incited by the anger over Modern Warfare 2 essentially killing off community developed content and personally managed servers, Altitude takes a spin from the origins of community gaming and fosters the community. So the folks at Nimbly Games gives the users 2 things: dedicated server software and map making tools. Dedicated servers so you can host games on a LAN or your friends online. Map making tools for people to make custom maps for the differing modes. There are even tournament leagues to teams dedicated to the game. Much like the first-person shooter crowd, a good server will always be packed full of folks. The community is pretty friendly and they even have “newbie” servers with plenty of slots and open map rotations of each mode so that new players can get their feet wet in the game. I will give praise to that sort of community effort to ensure that new players are welcomed to the game.
For the price of $9.99 USD either via the Steam Store page or via other conduits, it’s a rather fair price. However…the Steam copy is only available to Windows and Mac users. Using other methods, the game includes Linux binaries to allow users to compile the game and play within Linux. Also Altitude’s client provides “Community Points” that allow for extra skins for your planes and you can earn those points by: linking to Facebook, publishing game play stories to Twitter/Facebook, buying the game for friends or donating to the guys at Nimbly Games. The Community Points are more a novelty and optional if anything. Participation is completely optional and decorating your planes with these skins more-so just shows your support for the developers. I personally encourage donating to the developers at Nimbly games as they could use coffee, food, or beer for their efforts. The Facebook app is really fun as well, because you’re able to see where your friends stand as far as ranks go and even show-off if you’ve gained a brand new plane or jumped ranks over your friends.
Images sourced from the Steam store Altitude page. Some information was sourced from both the official Altitude page and the Altitude Community Wiki. Altitude trailer credits go to Nimbly Games and can be found on their YouTube site.
