Once upon a time, Jaleco released a game called Formation Z. It was, by and large, a fairly generic scrolling shoot ’em up that had one very powerful gimmick working for it. You played as a robot that could transform into a ship. Look, it was the early 1980s. This was still a relatively new idea. The game was more than a little broken, but you could change between robot and ship form more or less at your leisure. That was enough then. Here in the enlightened modern era… well, it’s still cool. Maybe that’s why we’ve seen two revivals of Formation Z recently. FZ: Formation Z comes by way of R-Type Final 2 developer Granzella, and it plays things a little straighter than Final Formation did.
This is a horizontally-scrolling shoot ’em up with five stages, each one offering plenty of vertical space to allow you to properly play around with the transformation mechanism that sits at the core of Formation Z. When you clear a stage, you’ll unlock a score attack version of it that you can play at your leisure. As you play, you’ll earn points that you can use to unlock new upgrades and customizations for both your mech and pilot. There are some extra unlockable robots you can play as, and you can fill out a gallery of artwork by achieving certain tasks. That’s more or less the sum of it. No online leaderboards to extend the fun, so most of the replay value is going to come from trying to unlock everything.
In a lot of ways FZ: Formation Z on Switch 2 reminds me a great deal of R-Type Final 2 on Switch. It’s aiming for higher-end visuals and suffers from a lot of performance issues as a result. Most of the replay value comes from grinding out currency to unlock things of modest gameplay utility. It’s quite tough, and its use of a checkpoint system means you can’t just bash your way through it all. It feels like it’s simultaneously over-delivering and under-delivering. Even with all of that in mind, it’s just good enough that thirsty series fans will likely be happy it exists. I know we’re living in curiously Formation Z-rich times, but trust me when I say it’s not usually raining transforming robots.
I want to swing back around to those performance issues, because that’s something you’re going to need to be aware of if you’re going for this Nintendo Switch 2 version of the game. There are two big ways the technical performance of this game drops the ball, and it does so rather frequently. The most obvious is the framerate, which is constantly all over the map. In more peaceful sections it’s smooth enough, but when things start heating up, the action can become shockingly choppy. Those who are sensitive to variable framerates are not going to have a very good time here. It’s really quite brutal.
The other problem comes from the variable resolution, which, like the framerate, can swing to a surprising degree. This can get so bad that it’s actually hard to see what you need to in order to survive. Both of these problems crop up in docked and handheld mode but are at their worst when playing the latter. It’s unfortunate to see Granzella having these kinds of problems even on the Switch 2, and it is a serious detriment to the enjoyment of FZ: Formation Z on the console. I’m assuming it runs better on other platforms, so if you have other options, you may want to explore them.
Frankly speaking, FZ: Formation Z didn’t need this additional burden. At its core, it’s already not as good as R-Type Final 2, so it’s less able to weather any extra problems. That makes sense, because the original Formation Z doesn’t trouble R-Type any. I think Granzella has done a good job at bringing out the best of that concept, though. You can swap between ground-based robot and ship form whenever you like, but you’ll consume energy while in flight. Run out of energy and you’ll blow up, simple as that. There are lots of ways to replenish that energy, so it’s unlikely you’ll find yourself running low on it too often. Still, it ensures that you at least spend some time on the ground.
When you’re in robot form, you can fire your lasers and do a melee attack, with the latter needed to deal with certain stronger enemies. You might think you can just stay on the ground, but at times you’ll get a warning that some sort of terrain you can’t traverse is incoming, and you’ll need to take to the air. It’s an interesting hybrid of standard shoot ’em up and scrolling action, and I think it mostly balances the two nicely without feeling like it’s railroading you into playing a particular way most of the time.
At the same time, I get the impression that Granzella knew five stages of this was only going to go so far. Hence the currency grinding and many unlockables, I suppose. You also get multiple difficulty settings, and the hardest of them is extremely difficult indeed. Even the easiest one is rather arduous, more so than R-Type Final 2’s lowest setting. This game loves cheap shots, and it’s a lot harder to memorize where they’re going to come from. I found the heat level in the last couple of stages rather high, and given you can’t really brute force your way through, I’m not sure what people who are less experienced with shooters than I am are going to think of that. Not to belabor the point, but the performance problems really don’t help matters. A sudden resolution or framerate shift in the heat of the action will often result in death.
FZ: Formation Z has its heart in the right place, and when everything is going well it’s a rather admirable update of a game that mostly got by on its concept. The heavy technical problems with this Switch 2 version combine with some flaws intrinsic to the game itself to create a rather unpleasant experience for all but the biggest of Formation Z fans, however. The high level of difficulty, variable performance, and heavy reliance on grinding to extend the life of the game all add up to an experience that is far more frustrating than it is fun. There’s something here to appreciate, but even if you’re curious about it, you’ll probably want to investigate it on another platform.
Version Tested: Nintendo Switch 2
Review Copy Provided by Clear River Games
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