At a glance...

Previewer	Platform	Publisher	Developer	Players	Release Date
Andrew Rouse	Xbox 360	Born Ready Games	Born Ready Games	1+ (Online)	Autumn 2012

Strike Suit Zero preview

Please note that a newer preview of this game is also available.

Strike Suit Zero is an arcade space combat game in development by doublesix. Earth is only three hours from destruction and it's down to the player to do everything they can to save it. The game will have a campaign with a branching mission structure where the missions available to the player will depend on how well they completed their objectives in the previous mission. At the end of a complete playthough, the player will be able to see which parts of the Earth they managed to save and how much is now uninhabitable.

The player pilots a small fighter in space which can switch between a normal space ship and a "strike suit" where parts of the ship unfolded to transform it into a humanoid mech with rocket boosters on every side. When in ship mode, the player can steer the ship using the right stick and control its speed using thrusters and brakes. In strike-suit mode, the craft becomes much more maneuverable and is able to move in almost any direction regardless of orientation. In the final game, the player will collect different strike suits as they go through the campaign, each of which will have different special abilities. The strike suit mode consumes ship-power and so can only be used for a limited amount of time within each mission.

The game is still quite early in development so I wasn't able to see a complete mission or even get confirmation as to whether the controls in the final version would match what I was being shown. In the sample scenario they had set up, the player was defending two transport ships from incoming waves of enemy fighters which could be attacked with either missiles, which were limited and needed time to lock on, or lasers which were harder to aim. After some dogfighting in which the first two waves of ships were destroyed, a larger enemy ship warped in and I was shown the strike suit in action. The added maneuverability of the strike suit allowed highlighted targets on the ship's hull to be taken down much more easily than in ship mode since the suit was able to strafe around the target, avoiding fire without getting too far away.

Strike Suit Zero is currently expected to launch in Q1 of 2012 and will be distributed digitally on Xbox 360, PS3 and PC. Though the game has some way to go before it's ready to show off publicly, the demo I saw here at Gamescom shows a lot of potential and I look forward to seeing Strike Suit Zero again once the controls are finalised and some of the missions are ready.

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