MACROSS -Shooting Insight- Review
I am not an anime person. It just never interested me in any way. Sure, I have played many anime-styled or anime-adjacent games, but the mere fact that it is anime or based on anime will not get my attention. Now, SHMUPs are another story. SHMUPs or shoot ‘em ups are my version of video game comfort food. Ever since The Raiden Project on the original PlayStation, I have been hooked. The chaotic dogfight just seems to relax me despite the assault on your visual senses with everything on screen all at once. I cannot tell you a single plot point of any SHMUP I have played over the last 30 years. I CAN recall the weapon upgrades from Raiden or the enemy attack patterns in Sky Force Anniversary to know when to use a bomb and when not to use a bomb. I was bound to play a SHMUP based on an anime and it figures that it would be one as old as I am.
Developed by KAMINARI GAMES, Inc., MACROSS -Shooting Insight- is a multi-perspective shooting game that features multiple characters from several MACROSS titles like Gamlin Kizaki from the Macross 7 TV series and Isamu Dyson from Macross Plus. Songstress are generally central to the plot of MACROSS so logically one would be the focal point in a game. In this one, a songstress has gone missing and it up to you to find out what happened over 10 action-packed levels.
Players can choose from 5 different pilots: Shin Kudo, Isamu Dyson, Gamlin Kizaki, Alto Saotome, and Hayate Immelmann. As I mentioned, I am not familiar with the series but Google is a wonderful tool and I discovered all pilots come from across several MACROSS entries. Each pilot has a range of stats that differ across the board. For example, Hayate moves the fastest while Alto’s lock-on ability has the longest range of the bunch. At the end of the day, though, their strengths far outweigh any area in which they fall behind the other pilots.
The main attack of each pilot also varies but ultimately pick the style you prefer. Personally, I liked the spread attack so I could just hit everything all at once. Better players than me may choose the laser that hits extremely hard but only fires one beam at a time, so you need to line up your shots. Unfortunately, the weapon you begin with is the weapon you take to your grave. The only upgrade is the power behind and no visual upgrade as seen in other SHMUPs. Power is increased by continuously shooting down enemies. If you miss too many targets or get hit and cannot destroy anything, your power levels will diminish. In addition to your main gun, pilots can lock on to targets and fire off missiles or just call in a Support Strike and bombard the entire screen, destroying both enemies (non-bosses) as well as their projectiles. You have a limited health gauge that does not refill but all ships can perform an evade move negating all incoming damage if timed right (it’s the SHMUP version of i-frames).
So what is “multi-perspective” anyway? Well, most of the time, you will be playing like a standard SHMUP; you are at the bottom of the screen with enemies approaching from the top. Other times, the game becomes a side-scrolling similar to Gradius or R-Type. OTHER times, you are suddenly in a twin-stick shooter with complete 360-degree control. Is that it? Nope. How about a third-person shooter? No, seriously. Your ship transforms into a mech and the game becomes a corridor shooter. In my opinion, this was the worst perspective as the depth perception felt way off. Luckily, this was the least used perspective of the four. All of the aforementioned combat mechanics are in play during each perspective. It would have been great if you could manually switch perspectives or if there was a game mode that let you set which perspectives were played.
Speaking of game modes, MACROSS boasts many ways to play the game. Story and Arcade mode have you playing through each of the game’s 10 levels, moving on after each boss. Ace Battle is a one-on-one simulation that has you fight against an AI player as you jockey from behind to in front of the enemy until one loses all their health. Boss Rush is just that and Area Survey is a one-off fight through any given level. There are also five difficulty settings from Very Easy up to Very Hard as well as additional modifiers to your health, your health regen, and the support strike ability. With 5 pilots to choose from and 5 modes, there is quite a bit of content to cycle through.
Fans of SHMUPS will enjoy MACROSS -Shooting Insight- with bonus points for actual MACROSS fans and/or anime fans (maybe - I had to Google anything I referenced in the review so I cannot account for accuracy). The changing perspective was a welcome addition and I would love to see it in other SHMUPs although with a bit more control of when it occurred. I rarely go into pricing and I hate the entire argument about hours played to figure out if a game is worth it but MACROSS’s price point feels high at $40 (USD). If you play story mode on Very Easy, you can easily finish all 5 pilot stories in less than 5 hours. If you just want to beat the game once and be done with it, obviously that price is ludicrous. On the flip side, only playing through one pilot’s story when there is significantly more content to experience is selling yourself short and not really grounds for a great argument on the price. At the very least, this is a quality game and if anything, should be watched and purchased on sale.
