ADIOS Amigos Review for Xbox

ADIOS Amigos, developed by Cosmic Picnic, is a 2d space exploration game with a great astrophysics system that you may well have been waiting for.

The main premise of the game starts off with your little astronaut (called an Amigo) stuck out in the middle of nowhere, and their odyssey to get back home to their planet. Now this sounds simple enough, but the game has a few tricks up its sleeve to make it bit more challenging than it would first seem. The game has three campaigns which can be played either by yourself or with the 4 player local co-op system. It also has a Rookie mode, which allows for players of different skill levels to play together.

Gameplay

To progress within the game, the ship’s navigational computer needs you to discover new items within the solar system, which in turn builds up energy allowing you to do a Z Jump. This Z Jump then warps you to the next procedural generated system where you start all over again to collect the necessary energy to progress even further. Now whilst this does sound incredibly boring, it cannot be further from the truth. The ship you start off with has realistic but intuitive handling, that you will need to carefully manage if you want to succeed in your overall mission of getting home.

The ship’s has limited fuel and it can run out quickly, because it depletes every time you accelerates. Flying from one planet to another is tough and you will need align your ships path with a planet’s trajectory and intercept it as part of the games impressive astrophysics design. Luckily, most planets orbit either a giant star, black hole or planet, allowing you to negate the need to use fuel and simply drift towards your intended target. A nice feature to accompany this, is the ability to fast forward time to speed up this process so you just don’t wait around. However, be careful as there’s no rewind button should you go too far.

Now besides trying to avoid taking damage from the numerous meteors in space, there are also a number of floating space shuttles and space stations which you can explore. Not only are these essential, as they can often provide you with a healthy amount of fuel and energy, but they may very well be the one of the most fun aspects of the game. This is because they often are the hardest to manoeuvre alongside and land. The space stations also require you to get out of your ship before you can enter. If you thought the flying was technical, try piloting your little amigo with a jetpack into a fast spinning space station after it was hit by a meteor!

The dev team have gone into a huge amount detail in terms of the games physical simulation of an entire solar system. It may look basic, but all planets, black holes and space stations, includes their own gravity, temperature, and atmosphere.

Now, planet travelling will be the bulk load of your destinations, and this will require you to land on any new planets carefully. Actually, any landings will need to be carefully co-ordinated as a landing at speed can obliterate your ship in an instance when at low health.

The main reason for landing your amigo will be to gather as much fuel and energy as you can. You’ll also want to find everything on the planet, as you will gain energy for cataloguing the lifeforms and objects that occupy each planet you come across. If you are lucky, you will even find some of the numerous collectables, which include new Amigos, ships, and hats which you can then later choose in further play throughs. Each collectable has its own unique perk, such as extra health or the ability to hold more fuel. Something which will very well help the games replay value.

Unlike space flight, exploration on the planet’s surface isn’t as challenging, and its generally a collection of simple leaps and grabs. Gravity will change on each planet, and this in turn has an impact on how far your Amigo can jump. This also effects items on the surface and will move depending on how you jump on them, or grab them. Bigger items will need you to take control of your ship and use its grappling hook to allow you to toe items out the way, or in some cases to anchor your ship on the more turbulent planets. This segment of the game for me is really fun and it’s great to see new unexpected lifeforms popping up. Should you ever get stuck, there is also a jetpack for your Amigo to help you make those longer jumps or push bigger boulders out the way.

Adios Amigos, can seem quite easy early on, but the difficulty level is ramped up the further you go, with some tricky levels not even having planets in the system. This then forces you to use a lot more ship fuel and search the solar system for those pesky satellites and space stations. Thankfully these are often flashing, which is a big help in you finding them. There is no save feature here, so when you die you restart from the beginning. To combat this frustration though, checkpoints have been added at every 4th solar system allowing you to choose to skip the earlier systems. Another nice feature the dev’s have implemented is a system wide camera option which means at any time you can view the solar system in real time. However, for me, I found this aspect a little tricky in terms of the specific buttons you need to press to go into this view. It not as easy or as fluid as id have liked, and in the more urgent cases, was the cause of me flying into a meteor as I fumbled to get back to my close up view.

Graphics

What can I say about the games graphical style… its charming and beautifully crafted. The games solar systems are stunning and evocative, and the planets are bold and sharp. One item to note is that because solar systems and their planets are procedural generated, you can find yourself, jumping onto similar looking planets. However, this is an issue with a majority of space exploration games, so we really can’t expect too much in that department from an indie team. A nice touch is the lighting in this game and how it illuminates the planets as they rotate around a sun or black hole they orbit. This in turn, ensures that depending on where you land and how long you stay, you will often find yourself on the dark side of the planet. This can provide some very tense atmospheric and surreal moments as you move you Amigo with only your trusty torchlight to guide you.

One special item I would like to mention is the Dev team have taken the extra care to add in a ‘’Large TV’’ mode, for people like myself, who game in the living room on a big screen tv. This option zooms in and gives you a closer look at the games 2d glory, and one I personally say should be an option in more games.

Sound

The game sound is mostly ambient with an overlay of noises for explosions, ship thrusters or your Amigos jetpack. However, what it does give is a selection of unique soundtracks based on saxophone solos that are strangely suitable and provide a nice funky blend for you to listen to whilst exploring. Overall it does its job in providing enough of a smooth background noise that isn’t jarring or distracting from the main gameplay.

Conclusion

So now its time for my overall rating. For those who don't know, i rate games in order or Avoid, On Sale, Great Purchase and Must Own. For Adios Amiogs I give this a game a rating of ''Great Purchase''

You can buy it here:- Microsoft

ADIOS Amigos is available on PC and Xbox One, and is coming to PS4 soon.

The current price on Xbox is £15.99 or approx. $21 US dollars.

The review code was provided by Cosmic Picnic.