Topic: Strike Suit Zero

[sirean_syan]

So Strike Suit Zero came out this week to more or less middling reviews with a few really harsh ones. It was apparently a Kickerstarter, but I missed it (or forgot about it) and learned about it through a Giant Bomb quicklook.

It's hard for me to pass up on space games so I bit. The game is actually far more arcady than the beginning of the quicklook gives it credit for. I would describe it as a cross between Colony Wars and Omega Boost with a style that takes the general look and feel of Homeworld (including music by the same composer) and mixes in some Freespace warfare. For the most part you fly around as a fighter craft and dogfight or pick at capital ships. Controls are fairly simple and it actually plays best on a 360 controller from what I found. The hook is that in several missions you're controlling a transformable craft straight out of Macross which can fire tons of drunken missiles in the space of a few seconds while being able to move freely around. The cool part is you're the only ship like that in what is a fairly traditionally space wargame. In the game's best moments you'll be in the middle of several capital ships filling the sky with all sorts of explosions while twenty or so fighters are darting about when you decide to transform, let loose something like forty missiles killing half a dozen fighters while strafing behind a cruiser and shooting down it's main guns. The game manages to pull off busy looking space battles with the best of them while giving you an incredibly powerful way to take part in them and it's awesome.

I finished it early tonight and came away pretty happy. The game starts slow (but enjoyable), suffers from a couple bad missions in the middle, but ends really strong in the last third when things ramp up. It's kinda hard (there are all sorts of forum posts out there about how the game is too tough), but nothing unmanageable once you learn how to balance between flight modes and dodge as the robot. I'm convinced most of the bad reviews never figured out how to play decently or stopped too soon to see the game redeem itself. I'd totally recommend it to any folks who miss stuff like Colony Wars or dug the space mission in Halo Reach. It won't fill the space sim gap, but it does feature some great space battles. Being an indie game on Steam it'll probably be dirt cheap sooner than later so keep an eye out for a sale.

[gpw11]

Perfect, I was just wondering about this.  You may have just sold me.

[Xessive]

I was curious about it as well, it reminded me of Freespace and Homeworld and Macross combined! I was wary about it at first but your post is reassuring.

[sirean_syan]

So I felt like updating on this game because it's totally become something special in my mind over the past bit of time.

A few weeks up the developers released a stand alone update called Strike Suit Infinity. It's something like $6 - $7, but at it's release it was half price for owners of the previous game and is on sale again. It takes the core gameplay of the original game and turns it into something like a horde mode without any real story. It's advertised as an arcade score attack game and it works really well. There are 18 rounds split into 4-6 waves. Waves are groups of enemy ships typically dominated by a particular kind of enemies, although they get more mixed in later missions and larger enemies always come with some sort of smaller escort. The real hook (for me) is that you earn credits for either killing larger ships, killing bonus ships in the shapes of transports and freighters, simply completing a round, or saving friendlies that might be around. In between missions you spend these credits to buy more friendlies for the next mission, including capital ships so you have some control over how the next battle will be shaped. I've only made it to round 14 (+/- 1), but the second half of the rounds get huge. In the last mission I've made it to I've had about 40 of my own fighters paired with 3-4 capital ships fighting off 3 waves of something like 30-40 fighters each and then facing 3ish capital ships. You get better scores by killing enemies quickly, either within a set time limit or within quick succession to get combos, and upping a score multiplier.

It's a game worth playing, maybe even on it's own, if you're in the mood for some spacy arcade action. I might even recommend it more than the original game because it strips away some of the stuff that might have dragged down the original game a bit and the price can't be beat. Again, it's getting middling reviews I think it's just largely being overlooked. The mechanics, while simple, take a bit of getting used to in order to really dig into the meat of the game. While I beat the first game (which has been patched to be easier since then), I've really gotten better and learned how to use shifting between mech and fighter mode often and quickly to get the most out of speed, firepower, and energy management because how Infinity forces you to be more efficient to get better scores and save enough buddies to have a large enough fleet for the next round.

Also, the original game just updated in two major ways within the past week or two. First, it's now a Steamworkshop game which means mods should be coming out. I haven't played any of the sample ones yet, but it looks like someone made something like a Wipeout clone (IDOL!), an Asteroids clone, and a 2D shooter. Second, a story DLC has come out although I don't know how that is yet.

In a lot of ways this game has really become a favorite of this year. Certainly better games have come out since then, but it's better than it's getting credit for. Currently there's a sale on Steam to get the entire package and I'd bet money this is one of those games that gets deep discounts during the summer Steam sale, so it's cheap. Really, space battles! Get it.