Impossible Soaring

There's something about human nature that wants to fly. From the Wright Brothers inventing airplanes to the superheroes we love to every science fiction film making us want flying cars, there's something about going airborne that equates to freedom from gravity's nasty pull. After playing the new extreme sports game Impossible Soaring, it's easy to see why so many people want to take to the sky. Flying through skyscrapers, over mountains and into sunken cities is every bit as exhilarating as you would expect, and adding a scoring system not only forces you to be more daring, but also makes Impossible Soaring one of the first great games of 2020.

It's probably worth starting this review by clarifying that you're not actually flying, but rather gliding through the sky. Your job is to soar around nine large stages in an attempt to earn as many points as possible before the time runs out. You do this by flying through the tight openings and getting as close to the obstacles and surface as possible. The trick is to combine the near misses into one seamless run in an effort to boost the score multiplier. Once the time runs out, you'll be ranked by the computer and tossed onto the online learderboard.

Controlling your customizable character is surprisingly simple. Once they start gliding, all you need to think about it steering and getting close to those buildings, mountains and trees. We do most of this through the analog stick, but you can also tap the shoulder buttons to yaw right or left. The problem is that you're constantly losing speed, so you'll need to keep earning points in order to stay in the air.

The stars of this game are the levels. The nine locations are mostly of the city and mountain variety, but they do a good job giving each one a unique identity. For example, the City of Towers, Sunken City and Sea Platforms all presumably house people, but they are dramatically different from one another. Same with Shelf Canyon and Sky Stacks, two mountainous stages with completely different topography. One of my favorite stages is the Coral Atoll, a scenic island setting filled with giant coral full of holes to swoop through. There's so much to do and trick off of in this stage, and that's before you discover all of its many hidden secrets.

On top of vying for high scores, there's also a mode that has you popping balloons. This is all about tracking down the scattered balloons and trying to run into them as fast as possible. It's not especially deep and you'll beat most of the challenges on your first or second attempt, but it's a good way to help you unlock the different levels.

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Impossible Soaring is one of those games that won me over right from the start. I knew I was going to love this game the moment I saw how easy and intuitive the controls were, and I ended up liking the game more with every new level. Even if you're not super competitive about high scores, you'll still love flying around and exploring these nine varied stages. There's something inherently relaxing about swooping through narrow passages and skimming the side of a skyscraper, and the accessible gameplay makes doing all of this easy and fun.

If there's a negative, it's that Impossible Soaring could use a few more tricks. I like the simplicity of scoring points by getting as close to the surface as possible, but it feels like it's missing something. It needs the flying equivalent of a manual, grind or ollie, something that allows you to interact with the stages in different ways. It also needs a few more objectives. For as much as I liked popping balloons and earning high scores, I kind of wanted to find hidden tapes, collect letters and do everything else that was found in those early Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. This definitely feels like the first draft of a really cool idea, and I hope developer Binary Jellyfish expands on the idea in a beef-up sequel.

Thankfully, this first draft is still pretty damn cool. Sure, it's not as deep as it could have been, but I had a hard time putting it down. I kept wanting to jump back in and beat those high scores and earn the higher grades. Impossible Soaring is not just easy to pick up and play, it's also bright, colorful, polished and, best of all, incredibly addictive.