Armajet review
The release of Armajet has been a long time coming. The game entered beta in 2016, and so it's had a lot of time to evolve and change in response to player feedback. The result is a multiplayer shooter that doesn't feel too different than what it started as, but it has a really slick interface and progression system that can get their hooks into you pretty deeply.
Sidescrolling shooting
Armajet is a 2D multiplayer shooter that feels pretty similar to something like Soldat. You play as a soldier with a jetpack, and you fly around constrained, symmetrical arenas and blast away at the enemy team. All over the map are jump pads, health pickups, and some powerups, as well, though your weapons are constrained to one of three loadouts you can pick between respawns.
With your jetpack, you don't just have free reign to fly all over the place. You have a limited amount of fuel that recharges over time, so you want to use it wisely. Depending on the situation, you might want to save it to make a quick getaway, or it might just be what you need to rain down some death from above.
Lead your target
There are two basic game modes in Armajet: Team Deathmatch and Fuel Frenzy. The former is pretty self-explanatory, and Fuel Frenzy operates a lot like the Gem Grab game mode in Brawl Stars. A spot in the center of the map spews out fuel cells, and the first team that can capture and hold ten of them for a certain amount of time wins.
Although the game modes present here are familiar, Armajet has a bit of a wonky feel to it that takes some getting used to. The controls are standard virtual controls that mimic those of dual-stick shooters, but the whole game is kind of floaty and slow. I imagine this is on purpose to make Armajet a friendly experience, even when playing on smaller screens, but this means it never really feels great. Even your bullets move really slowly, meaning you have to lead your targets in a strange way that can lead to some frustrating moments.
Fairly frequent freebies
Even if matches don't seem to be going your way-whether because of the controls or your competition-it's hard to resist diving back into another match of Armajet. This is because the game is expertly designed to make playing more of it as easy as possible and reward you for doing so. For every match you win and kill you get with a weapon, you earn currencies that lead to unlocks. A lot of these unlocks are unveiled via lootboxes, and they can be anything from cosmetic skins for your guns to entirely new weapons to add to your arsenal.
The best part of all of this is is Armajet is delightfully fair in its free-to-play design. You may have access to more stuff if you put more time (or money) into Armajet, but there's no leveling up of weapons to make them stronger or other distinct advantages that can give you a leg up over other players in a match. The only items available for purchase give you advantages in progression, but you still have to prove yourself by playing with skill against evenly-matched opponents.
The bottom line
If more free-to-play multiplayer games were as fair as Armajet, I'd play a heck of a lot more of them. I'm not even all that fond of the way Armajet feels, but I'm happy knowing that when I play it, I'm not being matched up against people who paid to be better than me.
