Strike Suit Zero is a futuristic space combat simulator where the player takes control of various ships and combat suits to destroy fleets of enemies. While flight simulators are somewhat of a mystery to this reviewer; the idea, presentation, and overall art style had me interested. The Earth is about to be destroyed by a hostile force and your allies are forced to use their Wild Card, the Strike Suit. A spacecraft that has the ability to change form and adapt to different combat situations to maximize results, this suit will change the course of the war. The story is your run of the mill save Earth from annihilation story, filled with enemies and traitors alike. The cutscenes are pretty cool as the art style is very nice to look at. While I don’t find much to stand out in the story in a way it reminds me a mix of Transformers and Gundam. The gameplay has some nice elements and ideas in it. However, I wish they were better executed. This is a game where it is way better to play with a joystick rather than mouse+keyboard and gamepad. The targeting reticle is incredibly sensitive and you end up doing loop-de-loops more often than not. This makes it difficult to fly in a straight line and attack the fleets of enemies shooting at you. Even when you kill the sensitivity in the control menu the problem exists. I was hoping the controls would be similar to HAWX on the 360 because they were onto something in that game. Minus the sensitivity, the gameplay is pretty good. The buttons/key bindings are defaulted well and it does support gamepad/joystick configuration. The dog fights get pretty intense with the amount of enemies on your screen. The game also supports a loadout system as you can replay missions with different ships to upgrade and customize your way to play. Every ship is different and the Strike Suit has two very different modes to master. The final elements from the gameplay are the ways for the game to end. Depending on your performance in missions the fate of Earth can have a different future. So there are multiple outcomes Strike Suit Zero’s magic is done by the fantastic Paul Ruskay and Kokia. This was one thing that kept me playing. The music is just plain awesome. Combined with the Mechanical Design Engineer Junji Okubo (Appleseed: Ex Machina and Steel Battalion) the game is visually gorgeous and the music is a real treat to listen to. Strike Suit Zero has a brilliant idea behind it. Ship upgrades, and variety coupled with large dogfights is a formula that works out really well. However, the touchy camera/ship controls are the real deal breaker with this game. This is a game that is a lot more enjoyable with a joystick rather than gamepad etc. I give Strike Suit Zero a 5/10. If you can get passed the touchy controls you will have a lot of fun.
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