I think it’s an inevitability. Unless something goes completely wrong, I think Sara’s going to have to deal with her fear of clowns yet again as Aero The Acrobat had a sequel.

And I liked it wayyy more than the first one.

There’s a lot to like and control issues from the last game are mostly gone and Aero controls as fluid as an Acrobat should.

Graphically, there’s a sweet upgrade here, so let’s mention that right out of the “bat” (shoot me for the pun).

There’s a DK Country feel to the game and you see it from the detailed storyboard animations from the beginning to the little touches of the spinning “A” life bar on-screen.

We learn quickly that Sara is right to fear clowns. They can survive falls from the sky and take-over a world real easily. Everybody trusts the clown, you know.

From the two games side-by-side, this is the game you’ll want over the original. Everything gets a huge upgrade including Aero himeself. He looks slimmer and angrier, while his animations are much more smooth and fluid along with the controls. It’s something that I can’t stress enough.

Level wise, there’s a lot of platform goodness to really like here. Timed jumps, moving obstacles, roaming enemies, everything. It doesn’t hurt that every level has a spot near the start where you can grab a ton of star power-ups and other treats. You just have to look, but not very far. Sometimes you have to rush towards to the end to find the warp back to the powerups and then be able to proceed through the level.

Funky to describe, but fun to play through. Imagine if you had to rush all the way to flag pole in SMB only to find the pipe there to bring you back to the start so you can grab the mushroom and flower power. That’s how some of the levels in Aero 2 work and I like it.

The clowns are still here, but you’ll find more animated bugs to deal with too. There’s a nice mix of clowns and other baddies to keep it interesting.

Audio gets a nice upgrade too and you’ll find a ton of nice 16-bit stereo effects throughout the game.

Grab Aero 1 if you have to, but waiting for Aero 2 is probably the better thing to do.

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