Instead, friendly fighters just kind of flit around aimlessly in the background, occasionally even colliding head-on with your Strike Suit in a bizarrely bumper-car-like fashion. Some of this could have been remedied if it were possible to give orders to other ships in my squadron, but sadly, no such option exists. Empowerment went right out the window - and into the infinite void of space where its eyeballs pop out of its head and it dies of explosive decompression. The end result was super frustrating - especially when dodgy checkpoints sent me hurtling back through both space and time to some tedious objective set I blazed through 20 minutes ago. So, on one hand, I had this intoxicating, almost sensual connection with this amazing machine, but on the other, many of my actions felt entirely futile and constrained. Rather, failure tends to arise from escort targets' (usually massive capital ships) complete inability to defend themselves. Both enemy and friendly AI's rudimentary at best, so there's no real threat that emerges from moment-to-moment combat. So instead of joystick-straining, edge-of-your-cockpit, similarly innuendo-laden battles for the ages, you get "kill 15 of X" chores atop utterly out-of-your-control escort missions. Or rather, if they did, they had no idea how to mold the rest of their systems around it. Bow before for me, for I am King of Space.īut it's almost like developer Born Ready didn't understand that. It's those moments of overtly anime-influenced empowerment that really make Strike Suit Zero. One screen-filling death blender of missiles later, they're just a charred downpour of space confetti. Suddenly, 20 or more ships barely even register as a blip on the radar. Where once a couple particularly dogged dogfighters could give me trouble, Strike Suit mode turns the tables and then hurls them into a black hole. It's in these moments - especially later in the game, when things have a tendency to become almost unfairly difficult - that the early, not particularly interesting bits get put in perspective. Part-light-speed-leaping fighter jet, part-Transformer, it can nigh-instantaneously morph into a giant robot after dealing enough damage and putting some fuel in its Flux meter. See, it begins as a fairly standard - though undeniably stylish - arcade space to-do, but after a couple hours of uneventful opening missions, the Strike Suit joins the fray. Let me step back and explain what Strike Suit Zero gets right, so as to punctuate my sorrow at the soaring shooter's languid, often infuriating lows. Oh, but hey, at least Strike Suit Zero has escort missions. While doing so, you can also destroy X number of this other enemy/object. My objective list then coughed out the exact number of flak cannons I'd need to dispose of to continue, and that's when it hit me: I was playing an arcade space shooter with the mission design of a middle-of-the-road MMO. Because, in spite of an Epic Mission To Save Earth From Certain Doom, that's what this had devolved into. "You'll want to start with the flak cannons, just like usual." "Let's take down that cruiser, then," it muttered, radio static clinging like bored spittle to its words. So then, why didn't I feel like a total badass? Why - to be honest - were my eyelids starting to droop as I sat nestled in my attractive, exceedingly grown-up-friendly gamerly pillow fort? Stars and suns be damned I shined brightest. My missiles overtook the black like crackling lightning, chains of explosions the thunder following in their wake. Any time I shifted into Strike Suit mode, the galaxy trembled. Me, though? I was a mechanical Viking god. I was screaming through the stars, dancing between neon blue light tangles that could've been the hair of some deceased angel. Midway through Strike Suit Zero, I found myself incredibly confused. But is it the dream come true it sounds like it should be? And can it carry an entire arcade space shooter on its cannon-coated shoulders? Here's wot I think. In Strike Suit Zero, you play as a ship that transforms into a giant robot. Born Ready, though, presumably encountered that exact situation and decided to create an alternate reality in which they got both. What would you do if some malevolent genie offered you the choice between either a) a rip-roaring, physics-defying spaceship, or b) a star-destroying giant robot? I would cry.
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