Developer Bushiroad Games along with publisher RED ART GAMES last week brought one of MACROSS’ modern shoot ’em up (“shmup”) titles to consoles—‘MACROSS -Shooting Insight-‘ dropped on Nintendo Switch and PlayStation consoles and not just on new platforms but as a rare western release for a Macross title. I myself aren’t familiar with the franchise (arguably my mecha knowledge stops at Gundam and ‘Chrome Hounds’), but I won’t ever say no to a good shmup time.
MACROSS -Shooting Insight- has players shoot through various entries of Macross in ten stages and various characters from all over the intellectual property. At least, as far as I understood from the game’s story mode, one of many aside from the arcade, boss rush, and manual stage selection modes. Here players can pick one of five Macross main characters to pilot, each with their own stats and shooting patterns. One of the key points of Shooting Insight is that, during stages, you’ll have your stats boosted by the coveted “Songstresses” who, from what I gathered in the story mode, have been captured by some old hag for data research.
Admittedly, I walked away from the story mode with little in tow, besides “make love, not war”. Though before I touch on that, it’s better I get to Macross’ gameplay style first. As a shmup, players will be shooting at enemies that approach from the edges of the screen (typically from the opposite side) with your primary and secondary missiles while dodging projectiles from enemies including their own very bodies. Shooting Insight has multiple modes of movement that the game automatically transitions to depending on the stage: sometimes you’ll be shooting on a horizontal axis, vertical axis, a top-down run and gun style of shooting, and (my absolute least favourite) shooting on the zed axis.
Theoretically, Macross -Shooting Insight- should’ve been a good time. We’ve a decent number of playable characters, enough gallery unlockables, solid visuals and sound effects, and difficulty sliders and a leaderboard for those that want to test their mettle against the default difficulty settings. Oh, and for Macross fans, there’s a good bit of banter and the songs that play during gameplay via the Songstresses are enjoyable little listens. Unfortunately, Shooting Insight has a significant number of flaws related to its gameplay and part of it is due to its presentation and combat mechanics.
I thought I was supposed to be playing a shmup when I first booted up the game. I jumped in with Isamu and jumped right into the game, ready to weave fire and dodge what came back. Instead, the first thing Shooting Insight does is assault my eyes with a cacophony of lights from opponents and the background. Heck, across the games many stages, you’ll be faced with fighting off hordes of baddies against asteroid and warzone backgrounds that take up just as much screen real estate as your objectives do.
Coupled with how the game’s lighting and projectile presentation are set up, you’ll end up taking a number of hits unfairly as your eyes are drawn to brown, red, dark blues, green, what have you. This is also compounded by the Songstresses’ appearances, all though thankfully most of their effects can be disabled in the main menu. But really, am I playing a shmup or a bullet hell here?
The PlayStation 4 struggles with framerate during intense situations and, unlike CAVE’s games, these aren’t intended as part of the game’s design.
In the game’s defence, your hitbox and the enemy’s projectiles are tiny and eventually I learned to be able to weave through much of the mess that makes it on the screen. Which leads me to my next pain point: your arsenal and how you can actually deploy it. As the player switches between stage set ups, such as transitioning from a vertical shooter to a horizontal one, your tactics will need to change as well. Some characters are at a disadvantage, particularly the ones that only shoot single target projectiles. As enemies pop up top and bottom, you’ll often struggle with population control as nearly all the playable characters move as slow as can be.
One way Macross wants you to combat this is via the Support Strike system, which is quite useful! By pressing the square button, players can fire off a screen-clearing barrage of missiles which clear enemy bullets and the baddies themselves briefly. Timing your uses is key a successful stage run, especially on harder difficulties as each difficulty step introduces new attack patterns and makes your life slightly more difficult. And dousing your DualShock 4 in sweat.
But your Support Strikes are limited! And recharges can take quite a while. In practise, you’ll need to be careful when you fire them out. But in some cases, you might just need to keep spamming them, especially against a particular boss fight (I want to say Stage 5’s) where dodging their projectile spam seemed nearly impossible. Now look, bir shmup ilah, I am not! But when compounded with the inability to fire both your missiles and primary fire at the same time, clumsy perspectives, and messy visuals, I found myself getting more frustrated with Shooting Insight every time I ran a story campaign.
Keeping up with character banter, too, can be difficult as the game suffers from “Borderlands Syndrome”, where characters actively talk to one-another while you, the player, are too busy fighting for their lives. The subtitles for voiced interactions are tiny and towards the bottom right of the screen as well—if you don’t speak Japanese, you’re going to have a bad time keeping up with spoken matters.
Touching on the zed axis perspective I mentioned earlier, occasionally the game will pit the player into a semi third-person mode (think ‘Kid Icarus’) except the player’s reticle is limited to a box within the screen that feels like it never manages to hit enemies. If you’ve successfully managed to avoid taking damage up to this point, you’ll start flinching here. Thankfully, these forced perspectives aren’t common, and the dodge button will still be your friend here. It’s your get-out-of-jail card, especially when the game launches waves of unavoidable ring waves at you from time to time.
But hey, if you’re in here for Macross character interactions, you’ll find plenty of them here. Not all of it is fully voiced, but plenty of it is! You can set the game to story mode and coast through the stages to catch unique interactions between characters that would otherwise not interact.
MACROSS -Shooting Insight- may ultimately be a good fan service title, and it has the modes to boot! But too many cardinal sins add that make for a rather frustrating shoot ’em up experience. ∎
MACROSS -Shooting Insight- | Review
Played on
PlayStation 4
PROS
- Good visuals and sound effects.
- Fun character interactions and solid voice acting.
- Good amount of unlockables and plenty of modes to test your mettle against other players on the leaderboards.
CONS
- Many stages suffer from total screen clutter.
- Most modes of play outside of mech mode feel cumbersome to control.
- Cannot fire missiles and primary at the same time.
- Fairly lame boss fights.
- Clumsy user experience.
