Strike Suit Infinity

Back at the beginning of the year when I was a fresh-faced optimistic youth I reviewed a crowd funded space-combat game called Strike Suit Zero.  I said it was a great little space combat game that was let down by a poor story, and Strike Suit Infinity pretty much sorts out my issues with it by existing.

Strike Suit Infinity is quite simply a sort of separate Horde mode.  The gameplay is functionally identical to Strike Suit Zero, with the only changes being to the way you earn ships and the upgrades for those ships.

The basis of Strike Suit Infinity is to survive 18 waves of various flavours of enemy.  Once you’ve stood strong against the tides you can use credits you’ve earned from nailing kills to hire new AI units to join you for the fights, or to upgrade the units you’ll be hiring.  Enemy transports will also appear during waves and hunting them down will grant you upgrades for your ships.

As you progress through waves of enemies the game starts throwing larger enemy ships at you, ranging from smaller corvettes to large cruisers and other capital ships. This is where it comes in handy being able to hire friendly ships, because you can get your very own brand of capital ship alongside squads of torpedo firing bombers to take down the enemy monstrosities of the later waves.

In between waves you’re thrown into bonus waves that pit you against a vast amount of enemies, perfect for exercising your strike suit’s lock-on missiles.

Like I say the actual bread and butter of the experience (flying about and shooting things) is exactly the same as it was on the original game, on the surface at least.  You zip around the battle… spaces firing lasers and rockets at foolish colonials while dodging enemy fire and trying your hardest not to be smeared by an enemy capital ship turning unexpectedly.

As with the original game the titular Strike Suit is the basis of what makes the combat awesome.  The gameplay is tight and responsive, fun and cathartic without it, but with the Strike Suit it’s a special experience.  You gather up flux energy through killing enemies and taking damage before using it to transform your ship and begin dealing ridiculous amounts of damage upon your hapless colonial foes.

The system for hiring AI adds an interesting little twist to the formula as now you must look at what enemy types will be coming to ruin your day in the next round and select buddies accordingly. It’s hardly an astounding level of depth but it is fairly important that you don’t try to set 5 squads of bombers against a wave of light fighters for example.  That would be dumb.