Shoot-em-up games often fall into different categories like vertical, horizontal, arena, 360, or corridor shooters. Games specialise in one or two of those sub-genres and milk them for all they are worth. That isn’t the stance of Macross Shooting Insight – the first fully translated Macross game to come west for some time. Shooting Insight isn’t just a name – it’s a mission statement. This Macross title ambitiously tackles all five of those sub-genres and attempts to weave them into a shape-shifting game of epic timeline proportions. Macross doesn’t quite land everything it does, but it is never short of entertaining regardless.
As someone who doesn’t know much about Macross (I have Macross 30 on import in my backlog) the story elements of Macross Shooting Insight went over my head. The brief is that various timelines of Macross are pitching in together to stop an evil threat. Well-drawn visual novel sections open each of the ten stages in the game and cut in with jarring interludes before a boss battle, but you’ll spend most of your time shooting away and can skip the story if you aren’t interested. Each stage is split into three sections, with each section being a specific type of shooter. One level might start vertical, switch to horizontal mode and then the boss will be horizontal again. Another might be an arena, then vertical and then corridor for the boss. The idea is that things are constantly switching and changing up and you’ll need to switch tactics to keep up with the new demands of each level section.
There are five pilots in Macross Shooting Insight and each has two attacks. One will be a gun or laser that shoots straight ahead – with some having more bullet spread and some being more laser-focused. The second weapon is a lock-on missile attack which the player uses the right analogue stick to lock on to enemies and then stop moving the stick to fire missiles. Each pilot again has a lock on limit and damage rate so you’ll naturally find some pilots are better at one attack over another. On easy difficulties, this doesn’t matter quite so much but from Normal difficulty and higher, you’ll have more enemies on screen than you can ever hope to shoot down. This means you’ll need to prioritise attacks and use your dodge roll to get out of trouble. You also have a special missile attack which replenishes over time with kills.
Vertical shooting likes to throw enemy fire at you which means you can’t shoot someone down in later levels and the lock on missiles becomes more useful. My main complaint with vertical mode is that your mech feels quite slow to move, so it stops you from being too aggressive. By contrast, the horizontal shooting sections make you feel very powerful because your weapon fire seems to take up a lot of the screen. I found the horizontal sections of the game a total cakewalk and rarely felt challenged. The 360 aim and arena shooter areas felt the most fluid and dynamic to play. The arena sections always revolved around shooting down energy-pulsing turrets and so the level designs felt identical each time you played it. 360 shooting sections were usually reserved for bosses who looked impressive but ultimately didn’t scale well across difficulties. They didn’t get harder – they just had more health. All of these types of shooting gave varying degrees of joy and fun though, which is more than can be said for the corridor sections. These Space Harrier style sections were visually impressive but the perspective felt off. When you shoot, it seems to fly by the enemies when they visually look like they should hit, and the lock on doesn’t seem to work consistently either. In the end, I would use the special attack to try and clear waves of enemies and hope for the best.
The main story mode is meaty and takes just under an hour to get through. For Western audiences, the game adds the ability to resume mid-story if you die. It also added health replenishment modes. The original game had one health bar for the entire game and frankly… that’s insanely difficult. Upon completing a level you get about 10% of your health back and that’s it. If you play with the original single health bar mode, your scores are added to an online leaderboard. It’s tough and I wonder how many will ever make it to the end on anything above very easy mode. Completing story mode unlocks an identical arcade mode without the cutscenes, a boss rush mode and a single-stage mode. For each pilot you complete story mode with, you unlock a special mode to dogfight against 5 other baddies. This special mode has the most responsive, speedy controls in the entire game and is a joy to play. It is also a challenge to complete and made me wonder why the rest of the game doesn’t run at that speed.
The more you play, the more you unlock. There are diorama mechs to play with, screenshots from the anime series to look at, and specific collectables to capture in loot boxes across each level. One notable omission is the ability to listen to the soundtrack. When a player kills a certain amount of enemies, it triggers a songstress to start singing a song over the radiowaves. Each song brings a buff such as stronger firepower or a debuff like taking less damage. The soundtrack is pure 90s J-Pop and J-Rock nostalgia and I’d have loved to play those songs outside of the game where your focus is on the battle more than the music. If you want to unlock everything, you’ll be here for well over 15-20 hours.
Whilst Macross Shooting Insight attempts to be a jack of all trades, it doesn’t quite master them all. That said, it is never dull. Something is always going on or about to shift perspective and there is something to be said about that, especially on the higher difficulties. Whilst the on-rail, lack of mech control will no doubt be a disappointment, and the inability to shoot guns and missiles feels like a missed opportunity, I still enjoyed myself. Uneven, but entertaining.
Review copy provided by the publisher. Macross Shooting Insight is out now.
Higher Plain Games is part of the Higher Plain Network. If you like what I do, please consider supporting me via Patreon for as little as $1/£1 a month. There are additional perks for supporting me, such as behind-the-scenes content and downloads. You can also share the website or use the affiliate buy now links on reviews. Buying credit from CD Keys using my affiliate link means I get a couple of pence per sale. All your support will enable me to produce better content, more often. Thank you.
