Review: Strike Suit Zero

Strike Suit Zero is the result of a relatively early Kickstarter campaign. With its success, it paved the way for several other space sims to also find their funding, and now we’re suddenly looking at a potential few years in which space sims could get a real revival as a genre. I’m very excited about that prospect, but for now let’s talk Strike Suit Zero.

The age of the space sim ended prior to the turn of the century. It was fun while it lasted, but eventually games like Elite, X-Wing Vs Tie Fighter and Colony Wars became outdated. At times they would give the player a true adrenalin rush as they flew through space destroying similarly-sized and colossal opposing ships alike. Sadly, their core design never really evolved alongside other genres. Soon enough, players found themselves giving up on any game that included the dreaded escort mission type, and no space sim developer ever came up with anything to replace that. You’d either be dog fighting, or dog fighting while escorting an ally. Thus, the space sim genre died, silently, miserably and with more of a whimper than an impressive supernova of awesomeness.

Born Ready Games seem to have taken a dislike to this situation. They’ve decided there absolutely is room for a modern take on the genre, and it’s their job to prove it. And frankly, they must be applauded for what they’ve attempted. Strike Suit Zero is clear proof that someone is willing to resurrect this once-beloved genre and bring it right up to date for the standards of 21st century gaming.

The first thing you’ll notice is that Strike Suit Zero looks absolutely stunning. Both the game and UI ooze artistic flair and make every moment an aesthetic joy to inhabit. It’s clear that a great visual style was among the priority checklist on the design doc, and it does not fail to impress.

The story conceit is a pretty standard affair: mankind has sent out colony ships to locate the source of an extra-terrestrial transmission. Once they find it, they colonise the planet and begin to mine it, therein finding ‘something’. Earth proper gets involved and takes control, one thing leads to another and, before you know it, you’ve got a Homeland versus Colonies situation (stop me if you’ve heard this one before). You play the part of one Mr Adams, a seemingly disgraced pilot that is looking to get back into the UNE’s (United Nations of Earth) good graces. Suffice to say, that works out.

Over the first three missions of the game you are taught the basics of piloting one of the game’s basic ships. You’ll be pitted against enemy interceptors as well as larger craft carrying rather large armaments that will decimate you and your fellow UNE pilots unless you destroy each individual cannon. For those of you that remember the greats of this genre, this is nothing new to you.

What is new is what happens next – requisition of the Strike Suit. This ship handles much like the previous interceptor, with the same plasma weapons and missile launchers you had access to before, save for its alternate state. Any time you destroy an enemy ship or structure, you gain Flux, and at any time you can transform the Strike Suit into a flying space mech that manoeuvres much more slowly, but does insane amounts of damage as your standard plasma and machine guns are replaced with something similar, but far heftier, and your missile type not only increases in power, but can now lock on to any number of enemies on the screen before firing a barrage of luminescent death rain upon them. The level of intense joy that comes with this particular flight mode is difficult to put into words – it’s like you suddenly go from being on a level playing field with your adversaries to making them and everything else in the universe your bitch. Unfortunately, this incredible ride doesn’t last forever; as you use the Strike Suit’s weapons, your Flux drains accordingly, and though each kill does give you a little more Flux to play with, you will soon find yourself entirely drained and forced back into the standard ship form.

Like the sound of this so far? You should do. This game is everything that the greats of the 90s were, and more. But that’s also the problem. When you set aside the gorgeous visuals and ship transformation mechanic, it becomes clear that Strike Suit Zero imitates too many design choices that just feel outdated.

There is, for example, a skill tree in the game. These upgrades increase your ship’s functionality, but are not chosen by the player. Instead, each skill slot is unlocked by completing a specific optional objective with each mission. The ludicrousness of this design choice became clear to a mere six missions in , when the objective was to – wait for it – protect another ship. As if an escort mission wasn’t bad enough, optional or not, said ship was being hammered down from 100% to 30% health before I could even get within range of its attacker. I ultimately decided it was an near-impossible task, after reloading the sector-entry checkpoint several times and persistently failing miserably. I get that these games are supposed to be inherently hard, but this was ridiculous. That isn’t the only escort mission either – in my opinion it’s exactly this kind of mission that forced people away from the space sim genre in the first place, and it saddens me immensely to see such a promising game be so reliant on it, even if these missions are mostly optional.

My other major grievance is with the way Strike Suit Zero handles saves. To their credit, Born Ready have done a great job of placing reasonably fair checkpoints throughout each mission, but the hard saves only occur at the very start. So imagine this situation – you’re on the last part of the aforementioned escort mission, having been plugging away at it for about 20-25 minutes. You reload that checkpoint several times, each time hoping that somehow you’ll figure out a way to save the ship and earn your upgrade. Eventually, you get too irritated and exit the game, thinking you’ll come back later to try again except, when you load your progress, you have to start the mission from scratch. The net result? Losing over 20 minutes of progress despite there being two separate checkpoints you know to have passed. This was the situation I was in when I discovered this issue, and I almost lost my mind in fury.

I get that I’m coming across as angry, but it’s only because I want to love this game. It could’ve been the space combat sim we’d been waiting for for over ten years, but instead it serves merely as a step in the right direction. To clarify, I don’t think this game is bad, it really isn’t. Despite my emotional outbursts, I still think the game is good. The moments when everything works out and the Strike Suit unleashes its full potential are utterly pleasure-inducing, and I want everyone and their mum to feel how good it is to play those parts.

But there are some problems lurking behind that shiny space mech veneer, as there always was with this kind of game in the golden days, and it wouldn’t be right if I glossed over those failings just because I want to have this game’s babies and play with them for the rest of my natural life. My one hope in all of this is that Born Ready don’t take these criticisms to heart, and that they instead consider them as the constructive criticism that they are intended to be – and use them to make their next game as jaw-dropping as Strike Suit Zero almost was. This genre needs reinvention, but a step in the right direction is fine for now.

Tags: Born Ready Games, Strike Suit Zero