Space Elite Force - The Future of Military Spending

 

Time For Space Elite Force, SEF for Short

According to the cheeky Star Wars inspired text crawl, Earth's first visit from extra terrestrials was of a military incursion. The evil Klyvus' attack left humanity in desperate need of their own interstellar fighter jet. The Space Elite Force or SEF cannot even enter orbit without being harassed by Klyvus forces, so it's up to a lone SEF fighter to break the blockade and carve a path for the newly minted SEF forces to setup base and wage a space-war worthy of a John Williams score, either that or just some rocking good tunes. 

Space Elite Force is more of a western indie shmup than the well established bullet hell cabinet titles. It's a horizontal auto-scroller that leans to the noob friendly in terms of difficulty and learning curve. The ability to save progress and further upgrade your SEF fighter compliment the blazing fast movement speed and forgiving 10/10 life-bar instead of 3 hits and you're out style of older shmups. Collecting all that gold and avoiding the frequent appearance of homing bullets means having plenty of cash to spend in the shop. Don't be a chump and spend it all on hull or missiles, it's the penetrating blue bullets that give you the best bang for your buck, probably to the game's fault. Each of the game's stages is capped with a bossfight that's easy enough to memorize, the hulking frigates and cruisers really look like something out of Steredenn and they are all a variation of their fallen predecessors. Space Elite Force is a pretty beginner friendly and short game that has enough explosions and rocking tunes to keep me satisfied for the hour that I played it. I can't complain that a game is short when I have hundreds to play, so I won't

The fast, cheap action of Space Elite Force has its appeal. There's not much in terms of variety or content outside of the handful of campaign missions, but games this short don't need a lot of variety. There of course is the option to play it over again on a harder difficulty or boss rush mode, but that's beyond the appeal that this game has. What the does appeal is the entry level difficulty to SEF over something like the R-Type series that recently saw a Steam release. SEF is a good way to dip your toes in the horizontal shmup genre without soul-crushing difficulty. Moreas Studios have already made a sequel and a vertical shmup game, I plan to play both, but that's a story for another day, Comrades.