Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut

So you take the weird, uncanny universe and aesthetic of Homeworld, and cram Macross into it. Those are the two strongest vibes I've ever gotten from this game. The music? Homeworld. The suits? Macross. The dialogue? Homeworld. The artstyle? Macross. I mean, listen to the soundtrack of this game, then listen to Homeworld's. Watch the strike suit transform, then look up a veritech fighter transforming. peak gameplay too.

As long as you go into this expecting a short game, the experience is an explosive action-packed movie which you replay for higher scores. Like Star Fox 64 without the animals and with missions on huge open space maps in a power-fantasy universe where you have the only awesome transforming mech and everyone else is fodder. This being the Director's Cut means a few tweaks have been made and also you get the DLC content as part of the package, but not the Infinity version which should have been included. I haven't played any of the others, but I can recommend this one. We begin in a universe split between two factions: the Earth forces who think they run everything, and the Colonial planets which get treated like an evil empire despite how badly they were wronged in the past while just wanting to be free. The plot keeps saying the Colonials are the bad guys, but I actually prefer the bad ending where they get the last laugh. You play as an ace Earth pilot who got punished for your mysterious amnesia, so now you're back in flight school and doing chores. But this gets you and another rule-breaker sent to a mysterious facility where an omniscient cyborg gifts you a super-ship that can switch to humanoid mode with the energy from shooting down enemies, ie adrenaline I guess. From there, you fight in a series of battles that eventually lead to saving Earth maybe. Combat starts in standard fighter-plane mode where you have two primary weapons and some number of secondary weapons. The primaries are an energy rifle where careful aiming is required and you can run out temporarily as the battery recharges, and a machine gun with limited ammo which auto-hits your lock on target in a wide area ahead of you. Use the former against stationary targets and large ships, then the latter on the highly maneuverable small ships. You also unlock a beam laser eventually but it seems to miss a lot. Secondaries include a broad selection of high-powered rockets and guided missiles; the guidance systems aren't very impressive so I generally used the dumb rockets, or the “Fire and Forgets” which shoot quickly and continue chasing until they hit some target. There's also a few big and slow missiles which can be useful against large targets. Ships often have two or more slots for secondaries, and you can select the same type in both to start with more ammo. When a transforming ship has enough energy, you can switch to the humanoid mecha Strike mode. You transform, your forward movement stops, you can now dash in any direction using the thrusters, and you can auto-turn toward your next target. Ammo is always infinite for Strike mode and the guns tend to become stronger in some way, so you can simply mash buttons in a burst of hyper-deadly action until the super energy meter runs out. That feeling of transforming into Strike mode and letting the auto-aim take over as you dart around destroying everything with stronger guns and missile circus spam is what this game exists for. It's amazing the first time and remains pretty good as you keep learning how best to use it, such as first transforming amid many small ships for the short range fast gun, or using another Strike ship's long range to snipe mid-size ships, or deciding between guns or missiles depending on your targets. There are other tactical choices to be made in the battles, though the tutorial mission didn't do a great job explaining. The target priority system gave me a lot of trouble at first; some missions absolutely require this greater battlefield awareness. What they tell you is that you can select the nearest target, or a target that's in or near your crosshairs. But before you do that, you should scroll through the target priority groups to decide what to focus on, such as capital ships over small fighter craft, or torpedoes when you need to protect an ally ship, or whatever the mission commander tells you is important. If you set priority to torpedoes and destroy them all, the name is grayed out until more appear and you'll target other stuff, perfect for running them down the moment they get fired. One minor flaw is the game cannot seem to decide how to mark your targets. Sometimes they use a white circle which turns red when you're in range, and might have a hard-to-see dotted ring to show you should fire from elsewhere because something is in the way. Or they use a white box (which doesn't change color if you are in or out of range) with markings inside that look crossed out (to me they look like “Don't Fire Here” when in fact you should) but those do a really nice thing where they are grayed out if you need to fly around. Mission medals remain almost completely mysterious to me. Sometimes I would do okay and get the highest medal, and sometimes I would try my hardest and not even get the lowest medal. There are possibly some missions where you can't score well the first time because the next-gen unlockable ships are only available after one success. Mission completion time seems to have the largest factor on the final score, but they don't tell you what's the best time. Restarting a section at a checkpoint will penalize your final time, though at least you get full health and ammo. The game has 13 main story missions, plus 5 optional “simulator” missions. At the end of each main story mission, you might unlock a new weapon, or a new ship which you can use if you replay a completed mission, or an upgrade for the first Strike ship if you complete side objectives. I liked how the simulator missions actually work as tutorials for advanced tactics, and suggest basic ships and weapons to use which gives you a feel for how tough this war is on the normal pilots. You can choose from Easy to Hard difficulty on any mission, and Normal difficulty was decently challenging. As for the plot and characters, they're kind of just people who talk at you occasionally and give orders or suggestions of how to win. A few of them have backstories which reveal everything you need to know about the big war going on: “Colonials are the bad guys for wanting freedom, so we committed war crimes to win a battle once, and now they're angry and will do whatever they need to win, so we have to fight desperately to survive.” At least some of the map scenery is cool. Overall, I had a great time playing this for the gameplay alone. Certain elements were confusing for a while, but they do become clear with time. The story experience left me wanting a more complex and interesting plot where I don't feel I'm fighting on the wrong side, though I prefer having any plot to none. Try this for the epic Strike mode combat!

very Macross very arcade like

imagine getting shot, but the game targets ONLY SPACE JUNK

Macross type weapons with Top Gun type action.

Utterly fun, utterly engaging, does it have its flaws? Yes. Plenty of them. But i honestly cant say i don't love this. I am a major fan of space sims, always have been and the market for them has always been small, much to my great sadness. So i was a backer of this game the instant i found it, and i have never once regretted it. Get it, if you like a super fun space sim with no BS involved, you will have fun, and the battles are really fun too! :P

Probably this was the last of freelancer-like game I played. The switching between ship and robot is memorable as is the soundtrack. I played this version and not the original not even knowing that the other one had many bugs. Well, I've been lucky! 7.5/10