Blazing Beaks Review

Get ready for some steel-beaked, ballistic action with Blazing Beaks on the Nintendo Switch. The new game produced by Qubicgames and developed by Atlava is an intense action game starring (wait for it)…creatures with beaks. And guns. Big guns! It’s not quite the insanity found in classics like Smash T.V. or Zombies Ate My Neighbors, but there’s quite a bit of crazy stuff to discover!

Blazing Beaks is played from a birds-eye perspective (how fitting). The player controls one of several animals, each with a unique weapon and ability. A duck, platypus, penguin, rooster, parrot, bluebird, and two others star here with an arsenal including everything from grenade launchers to laser blasters. Because, why not?

Play control is pretty smooth with the left analog stick moving your beaked hero around the playing field and the right analog stick aiming the reticle for your weapon. The ZR trigger fires. It’s a twin-stick shooter, so the play control is quite simple, if not frantic. Getting around is fast and easy, but it’ll take some skill to avoid all of the various enemies, bullets, and hazards in your way.

The game offers a story and tournament mode. Tournament mode gives players the option of playing deathmatch, a randomly chosen weapon, a “capture the flag” event where the “flag” is replaced by a golden skull, a mode where players lose HP when hit, but opponents can grab the lost hearts, spear hunting, or random. The tournament is fun and offers a unique multiplayer experience that’s perfect for parties. The game really shines in this mode and it’s probably the biggest reason to boot it up again and again.

Story mode offers up some substance and functions as a dungeon crawler/shooter hybrid. The player guides their heavily armed and beaked creature through a series of rooms, collecting artifacts, and blasting bizarre enemies along the way.

The game also has the now-standard achievement log as many of these types of games do in recent history. To add some meat to the otherwise straightforward experience are RPG elements baked into the action. Players can improve their characters, go on quests, find artifacts, increase HP and more.

With well-crafted pixel graphics and detailed environments, the game looks like it would be right at home in the Super NES era. The animations are smooth and sometimes hilarious—especially the enemy deaths—and overall it captures the retro spirit better very well. Imagine a 16-bit version of Adventures of Lolo, with heavy firepower and less puzzle-solving and you’ll sort of get Blazing Beaks in a nutshell. With both single player and multiplayer mayhem, there’s a decent amount to like here.

The game’s music is atmospheric with varying tempos across each of the stages. It has the feel of something one would hear in Super Metroid or another suspense-filled, exploration titles, although it lacks that certain magical sauce needed to become stuck in your head.

With its options to play the game in short bursts and the add-on of a full campaign for single player, Blazing Beaks will probably appeal to both the casual player and more dedicated player alike. It’s a fun, fast-paced, hilarious action game that has the potential to provide days of fun and enjoyment.

David Buck

Based in Colorado, David Buck is an author, musician, and media specialist. In his spare time, he composes music, writes science fiction, and builds scale models, mostly starships and movie cars.