GAME CLEAR No. 199 -- Squad 51 vs. the Flying Saucers

Squad 51 vs. the Flying Saucers (2022, Multiplatform)

Developer: Loomiarts, Fehorama Filmes
Publisher: Assemble Entertainment, WhisperGames
Clear Version: PS4
Clear Platform: PS5
Clear Date: 11/22/24

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Why should I care?
Solid shooting and a cracking aesthetic combine for a game I’ll think about for a long time.

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Aces high

It’s really nice to play a game once in awhile that you’d never have known you wanted until it came to be. “Shmup homage to ’50s sci-fi movies” is a delightful series of words that you certainly couldn’t have used use to describe any game that came out prior to Squad 51 vs the Flying Saucers, but that also naturally makes it a trickier thing to pull off than something more derivative. Fortunately, Loomiarts lands the plane here and delivers something really special.

The game takes place in a time roughly contemporary with the films that served as its inspiration. Prior to the events of the game, technologically-advanced aliens reached Earth and and seemingly came in peace. They established diplomatic relations and commerce with the Earthlings and generally seemed to not want to colonize the planet or harvest its resources at the expense of its denizens as one might expect in such a scenario. Humans benefited from their advanced tech and all seemed to be well. It was all a smokescreen, though, as Director Zarog of the aliens’ Vega Corporation begins to execute his plans to take over the planet to kick off the events of the game.

For the good of Earth, protagonist Lieutenant Kaya and the other plucky members of Squadron 51 dare to oppose the alien menace. When things start to go south, she and her comrades take to the skies in era-appropriate aircraft to take on Zarog’s army and repel the invaders in spite of the steep odds.

This would be a decent enough exposition for any humdrum shoot ’em up, but the story is brought to life by the wonderful black-and-white, live-action cutscenes that play before each stage. They bring the characters with competent and fun portrayals and give you some folks to pull for. While the action and gameplay mostly take place in 3D-rendered environments with only sparse FMV background components, they nevertheless feel completely cohesive with the live-action portion because of the attention to detail given to the modeling, lighting, and styling of the enemies and environments. They look like exactly the sort of thing you’d see in an old alien flick.

Bits of polish help too. Title cards before each stage are presented with that sort of ominous, lo-fi, brassy refrain you’d expect when they appear. If you lose all your lives, the game over screen is delivered as one of those spinning newspaper shots movies used to love to have, complete with a darkly humorous front page full of pro-Zarog propaganda headlines and photos celebrating his victory and his forthcoming rule. Things like that help sell an aesthetic every bit as easy-to-love as something like Cuphead but in some ways more difficult to pull off.

This all would matter a lot less if the gameplay weren’t any good, but fortunately it’s lovely. Squad 51 is a relatively simple, three-button shmup. Before each stage, you configure your airplane to your liking. All have a standard rapid-fire machine gun, but your choice of your two secondary weapons is up to you. You can also equip other buffs like increased firepower, additional lives, or a smaller hitbox. These unlock at a steady pace as your all-time cumulative score (including in runs you died on) increases. Once you feel comfortable with your loadout, all there is to do is fire away. There’s the occasional ammo drop that will instantly refill your secondary weapons’ cooldowns, but other than that, you’re not going to have to do a lot of power-up chasing like you might in other shooting games.

In a genre notorious for its difficulty, this one also stands out as quite reasonably tuned. Although I wouldn’t consider myself any sort of expert on shoot ’em ups, I’ve definitely dabbled enough in the genre to feel comfortable recommending this even to folks who shy away from this sort of game. It’s challenging at times, but it never feels remotely unfair. It also has reasonable checkpoints, and once you get your ship pretty well upgraded, you can really start to melt those enemies.

If anything, this game may slightly disappoint genre veterans. Shooting bad guys looks, feels, and sounds great, and the stage designs and enemy variety are solid, but I wouldn’t say it does anything jaw-droppingly clever from a gameplay perspective.

But being a merely good shooter is sufficient for a game that accomplished its vibes mission so utterly. If anything about the game I’ve described above sounds remotely interesting to you, I’d strongly encourage you to check this game out. There are bigger and better games out there, but there are few that accomplish such a singular and daring vision so well. At least pull up a longplay to ooh and ahh at it a bit. It’s a worthy little title.