Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut (PS4) Review

I remember when I first saw this game on Kickstarter over a year ago. I thought the game looked fantastic! As a big fan of Wing Commander, I thought this game looked to be a mix of that, plus Robotech and the Dreamcast game, Starlancer. After playing it, I can say that it really does have that feel.

The story is set in the year 2299 and there is a civil war between Earth and rebellious human colonies. You play a pilot named Adams. He and his wingman have discovered that the Colonial Fleet is in possession of a weapon powerful enough to destroy entire planets and they are heading to Earth. Adams receives a titular suit from an AI named Control, who coordinates counter attacks against the Colonials.

The game controls are super easy, sticks control roll, pitch, and yaw, while the buttons handle shooting, acceleration and deceleration, and firing off missile-diverting chaff. Targeting is tricky because you end up cycling through enemies until you find the one closest to attack. What sets this game apart from your normal space shooter is the ability to morph your ship into a robot whenever you destroy enough enemies to load up on energy called flux. You lose all maneuverability and speed and can only sidestep, but that is made up for by dealing tons of damage.  You can also upgrade your ship's load out with more powerful weapons along the way.

Graphics on the PS4 are really nice looking. Running 1080p and 60FPS with very little slowdown, which is really nice when there are sometimes tons of things on the screen at one time. Checkpoints are close together which is also nice in a game where some mission can take 30 minutes to complete. The campaign is lengthy with 13 missions taking over 10 hours to complete. There is also an AI training suite with increasingly challenging combat scenarios that get pretty difficult quickly and you are graded on your performance which make these worth replaying.  

Over all I really liked Strike Suit Zero. You just don't see this style of game on consoles much anymore. It is a solid space shooter that is not too arcady or too tactical. If you are a fan of X-Wing, Gundam or Wing Commander then this game is for you.

4 out of 5

Strike Suit Zero: Director's Cut is available now on PS4, XB1 and Steam for $19.99

The PS4 version was used for this review and we would like to thank Born Ready Games for providing a copy for review.