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Strike Suit Zero is a symphony of alloy and energy; steel and space. Moments of serine
calm unravel the legend of future Earth, but the quiet flashes of peace soon fall victim
to the crescendo of war. Lens flares and particle tracers bridge the aesthetics’ destructive
beauty and intense combat tear apart the tranquility of space.
Strike Suit Zero is composed of highs and lows. The lows can be found in the story,
which is intriguing, but it’s hard to tell a compelling tale from behind the eyes of
a fighter jet’s afterburners, especially when you never leave the cockpit. The only
connection to the war you’re involved with is through mission briefings and impromptu
com links with your fellow comrade-in-arms. Those comrades refer to you as Adams but Adams
is a hollow character, void of dialogue who also makes no attempt to connect with the
player. As a result, the weight of exposition falls on the shoulders of the supporting characters,
of which some are interesting but most are not. However, the stage is more appealing
than the cast that occupy it. This play is given an eye-catching stage with
an entrancing backdrop of celestial space. Missions will take Adams all over the galaxy;
from the intensely chromatic reminisce of a planet ravaged by a weapon of great magnitude,
to asteroid fields glimmering with purple and blue shimmers from a distant nebula – the
spectacle of what surrounds the missions is quite surreal.
The missions themselves, however, are nowhere near as inspired. Objectives range mostly
from protect this, destroy that, but the handful of ships you’ll unlock throughout the storyline
bring a unique style of play to each stage. For instance, the Bomber is slow but powerful
with heavy torpedoes to bombard massive carrier war machines, or the Scythe Interceptor is
sharp and agile for those who wish to focuses on the quick maneuvers of dog fights. But
then, of course, there is the Strike Suite – a one-of-a-kind metal angel of death;
able to flip in and out of a mechanized mode to reign destruction and then instantly revert
back to pursuer mode to pulse away in break-neck speed. So, where the missions fail to bring
flexibility, the combat and play style of the different ships succeed.
Even though the thirteen missions are not varied to a great extent, Strike Suit Zero
does benefit from different weapon loadouts and stage challenges to unlock various mods,
which will keep you coming back for more. Plus, the fact that the combat becomes increasingly
difficult while being marvelously captivating and entertaining doesn’t hurt either.
So between the crescendo highs of combat and the diminuendo narrative lows, I kept returning
to the same conclusion: Strike Suit Zero is a song of triumph and a spectacle of awe.
It creates a magnificent high that only the sights and sounds a robotic space opera of
mechanized destruction can manifest, and it does it, brilliantly.