RQ: Air Zonk

[Herr Schatten]

Alright. I downloaded Air Zonk for my VC, played two quick games and must admit the following:

I have no idea what the hell is going on.

Can someone please explain to me the basics of the game?

What are the three game modes?
What are the differences between the friends?
Is it a good idea to dismiss them and fly alone?
What do the weapons/powerups do?

[DJ Incompetent]

Well, the auto and manual things are for picking your one friend to roll with you during that stage. Collecting the yellow smiley things will eventually generate a big smiley which upon collection, you get your friend to fly with you. From what I've seen, when you first summon the friend, all of them have the same forward missile attack. But when you generate and collect another giant smiley, your friend merges with you and your attack totally changes. Only when your friend merges with you is when each friend does something different. The other upside is that you become invincible for awhile, which is the big draw of merging.

However, with all the merging attacks I've run with, I think it sucks compared to just having the friend guy shoot missiles for you. You really have to adjust your play to accommodate the merging friend attack. You also lose whatever solo powerup you were using.

That's where "Alone" comes in.
In Alone, the smileys seem to only be for points*, however you'll see different powerups (red car, blue heli, yellow drill). These will fly around with you like your friend did when collecting the first big smiley. But unlike your friend, these vehicular option powerups will get destroyed after a couple hits....the Drill, being the most useless in this case.

*this may not be true, and may be collected to generate helper icons (car/heli/drill) but I didn't spot any patterns

Do the Home button Operations guide thing and it should tell the rest. The main solo powerups only change your shot and charge shot. Any powerup you get will allow you to take an extra hit except the shrinking one, where you do have a reduced hitbox, but still takes 1 hit to die....aaand you lose your charge shot.




Anyway, to answer your question.
Playing with friends is better in the early stages, but I was unable to generate a big smiley to call the friend on-screen in the final stages.

I switched to Alone, and even though you'll operate with less firepower in the long run, your attacks will be reliably straightforward, so play will be more stable and you can focus on dodging instead of learning to control goofy attacks. You'll see a few vehicular option powerups in all stages. And you'll keep your charge attack.



Oh yeah, holding charge attack a long time generates a screen-clearing bomb. I would only use these for much of the hard parts.


I think the 3 game modes are mostly different life counts. Holding select and right at that screen gets you 3-man expert mode, where enemy bullets move faster.

[Herr Schatten]

Thanks for the clarifications. I feel less confused now.