I love playing shmups as much as the next retro arcade fan, but it’s hard to deny they can get a bit samey. Many games in this genre are rather simple, and don’t really do enough to differentiate themselves from the other scrolling spaceship titles. I’m always willing to take a chance on a new shooter though, because the thrill of weaving between bullets and taking down massive bosses is often unmatched. FZ: Formation Z may have a name you’ll struggle to remember (believe me) but you won’t forget its fantastic ideas that shake up the shmups.
The setup for FZ is simple enough, you’re going to fly a spaceship and shoot alien machines while trying not to die. It’s your craft that makes this unique though, because it transforms. By holding a button you’ll morph your spaceship into a mech that runs on the ground or vice versa, and as well as looking incredibly cool this changes everything.
While in mech form you can fire in a 90 degree arc in front of you, and use a sword to slash ground based foes. In ship form you can only shoot dead ahead, but have homing missiles that will happily dispatch the foes that escape your lasers. Both forms can fire slow piercing shots or rapid non piercing ones too, so there’s a lot to think about in terms of offence.
Despite some cool mech abilities, flying in ship form is almost always the best way to avoid bullets and deal with the most enemies. You even move faster through the stage too, but there’s a catch. When you’re flying about as a ship you use energy, and if you run out you’ll be forced to the ground regardless of how safe it is. This means energy management is the key to success, and this only becomes harder as more and more enemies flood in.
You see energy isn’t just used for flying either, it’s also used for special attacks. When faced with a wall of enemy ships sometimes a volley of extra rockets is the only way you’ll survive, but that means using energy you might need later. It’s a careful balancing act, but by collecting enough energy pickups you should be able to make it work.
There are only five stages in FZ: Formation Z, but they all present some pretty unique challenges. One features sky lasers that will try to blast you out of the sky (or I suppose ground), another has meteor showers that will happily end your fun if you’re not careful. While the amount of stages did feel a bit disappointing, it’s also worth mentioning that they have a load of verticality that is never really present in the genre. You can fly higher at the cost of more energy, but you might just find more goodies or better routes if you do.
These goodies come in the form of credits, which you earn as you play through the game and can spend in a shop between playthrough attempts. There are all sorts of cosmetic ship customisations to buy here, alongside mods that actually grant meaningful damage boosts, and even entirely new ships with different abilities. This really adds a lot of extra reason to keep playing and taking on tougher difficulties, although the new ships especially feel a bit too pricey.
As a shmup, FZ: Formation Z just does a whole lot right. It has five difficulty options that mean that even those who struggle with the genre (like I often do) can happily manage a playthrough. It also has wonderful visuals and a particularly toe tapping soundtrack. There are even little minigames that break up the stages for a fun change of pace, where you have to carefully dock your ship or shield yourself from asteroids for a successful take-off. It’s a full package of a game from the genre that often feels a bit bare bones.
There’s a lot to appreciate in FZ: Formation Z, but it isn’t quite at the highest altitude on my shmup list. The main issue it has is that there are some weirdly dull sections in some stages, where you face the same loop of enemies, hazards or nothingness over and over. It’s very odd, and quite possibly the fault of the wider stages. The controls and different abilities also take a bit of getting used to, and with only a video to teach you how to play it’s a bit of a slow start.
FZ: Formation Z does a lot to stand out in a genre of similar shooty games. Its main hook of changing forms is incredibly clever, and the energy balancing act it enables is rather compelling. If you’re looking for something a little different from other shmups then this might be the game for you, just make sure you start on Very Easy and you’ll manage the transforming journey.
