Sol Cresta (2022)

Platinum Games finally makes a retro shooter after putting levels inspired by the genre in all of their action games. They nailed it obviously. They also put their own spin on it taking inspiration from The Wonderful 101. The game starts me off with one ship. I can dock with up to two other ships. Each ship has it's own standard weapon and special weapon. I can change the docking order the ship to swap these weapons. There is also a formation mechanic where I can separate the ships to put them in a specific formation. The different formations provide a different powerful attack. It's a neat mechanic that took some getting used to. I got pretty good at it as my life started depending on it. This game gets really hard from level 5 to the end. It's the hardest game I've played this year, but I never wanted to stop playing it. I was impressed that I was able to beat it. It was demanding a lot dodging all those projectiles.