LifeisXbox’s Operation Zeta review | You’ve just lost a battle codenamed “Operation Zeta”, and it’s up to you to repair your broken ship so you can get out of this battlefield alive. In this puzzle-action game, Operation Zeta, developed & published by SFS Studios LLC, you have 10 minutes to help out creatures on different planets that’ll provide you with the necessary parts to fix your ship. Every creature has something different for you to do in order to earn a part, do you think you’re fast enough to complete ’em all?
Most Memorable Moment
I really liked exploring all the different planets in the game. While 10 minutes isn’t enough to collect all of the items, I sometimes did try that on a few of the planets. I also liked the unique challenge each new character brough into the game by changing the way the shooting system and abilities work. Completing a game with a new character also unlocks a new achievement, which was quite rewarding!
ℹ️ Reviewed on Xbox Series X | Review code provided by PR/publisher, this review is the personal opinion from the writer.
What we Liked!
- Engaging Gameplay | You find yourself stranded on a planet with a broken ship after losing Operation Zeta. Now it’s up to you to find the missing parts of your ship in order to fix it. You’ve got exactly 10 minutes to travel to multiple planets to find these parts, but if the timer runs out, the so-called death laser will be the end of you. While the 10 minutes feel like nothing when you play the game for the first time, you’ll slowly get used to the timer after a few tries. When you travel to other planets you’ll find creatures who need your help with things, if you fulfil their tasks, they’ll provide you with the necessary parts of your ship. These parts will have to be brought back to the planet you started on, and will have to be fixed with something else called repair parts – these can be found almost everywhere. Be aware that there are different kinds of planets; some of them have very high gravity, making it hard to jump, and some have low gravity, making it possible to just float around. Planets also have different resources that can be used to help other creatures, and some even have different enemies.
- Every playthrough is unique | For this being a game that can basically be completed in 10 minutes, they had to add features that make the game unique and rewarding with every playthrough. Every time you start a game you’ll find out that planets have been randomised; their locations, sizes, enemies, quest creatures, gravity, etc… all randomised. The creatures who give you your spaceship parts for completing their quests also have been randomised, but there are so many unique creatures that you’ll still come across undiscovered creatures almost 10 hours in, usually with some new quests for you to complete. Besides a randomised world, there are also playable characters to be unlocked. Most of them can be found throughout your multiple adventures with other characters, and some will be unlocked through upgrades. While every playable character jumps as high and walks as fast as the others, they all have their unique animations and abilities. Some easier characters have bullets that shoot straight in front of you at a fast phase with bombs as an ability, and some more difficult characters have bullets that don’t shoot that far, with a longer delay between each shot. Most of the abilities are bombs, but they all explode in a different way. Some characters have unique abilities, like: disabling the timer, showing quest locations, etc…
- Plenty of upgrades | If it wasn’t for the upgrades, I probably wouldn’t have been able to complete this game, or… at least, it would’ve taken me a lot longer to do so. You get credits for completing quests and for successfully escaping the battlefield in your repaired ship. These credits can be spent on upgrades that’ll make your adventures a lot easier! That 10 minute timer I talked about earlier, you’re able to extend it to 15 minutes, which is SO helpful! A few other notable upgrades are “Radar”, which shows you quest locations when starting a game, “Upgrade OZ”, which fixes the provided parts of your ship automatically, and the “Max HP Boost”, which gives you more lives, and it was totally necessary!
Mixed Feelings
- Graphics and Music | The graphics in Operation Zeta looked decent! The pixel-art style in this game worked pretty well with the space theme. Characters were nicely animated and objects/items were easy to recognise. There was also music in the game, but it was done in a fairly odd way… Instead of hearing the soundtrack when playing the game, you get to hear it in… the character selection screen…? When your pointer is on a character in the menu, it’ll play a unique song for that one character. When you start the game with that character, however, it’s nowhere to be heard. While the music is pretty nice, it’s just absent from the actual game, which makes no sense… There’s a track that plays very rarely while you’re playing the game, but you’ll mostly be hearing environmental noises.
What we Disliked
- No velocity for you | This is something that’s fairly rare, but it was common enough in my playthrough for it to be an issue. There’s this quest that requires you to orbit an object around the planet you find yourself on. But every now and then, the object just doesn’t want to orbit at all; instead of orbiting, it just falls right to the floor, no matter how hard I throw it. As I said, it’s rare, but when it does happen, this forces you to restart your game, which can be quite frustrating if it’s one of the last quests you’re doing.
How long to beat the story | about 1 hour
How long to achieve 1000G | 15 hours
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