Omega Strikers (Xbox Series X)

Omega Strikers looks to take the ideas of air hockey and make it into a full-body sport. Rather than paddles hitting a puck around a table, two teams of three will punch and kick a puck as big as they are, even unleashing supernatural powers and specialized technology to earn points. Add an anime style on top of it all, and this free to play sports game really tries to build the game up into something more layered and appealing than the simple table game that inspired it.

 

In the universe of Omega Strikers, their more advanced and intense twist to air hockey is known as Corestrike with the puck here being referred to as the Core. Omega Strikers does not contain any story mode or single player options beyond some training and tutorials, it focused purely on multiplayer competition, but there are bits of lore to be found if you go digging in the character profiles. Corestrike seems to be the preferred sport in the technologically advanced world the game takes place in, Omega being a special energy that was used to enhance society and can even be found in the Core itself. This is a world where mythical onis used to live as second class citizens, a reptilian alien race has made contact, and a phone assistant named Ai.Mi managed to become sentient and manifest in the real world as a catgirl who can utilize her glitches to gain an edge on the Corestrike court. It seems when Omega Strikers wants to have a character who is a giant hamster or a witch they’ll come with an explanation after, character appeal feeling more important than the narrative justification for their existence.

Varying up the characters is important though, because the most important choice you’ll make in a match of Corestrike is when you’re on the character select screen. Every character is able to perform a basic strike on the Core, as well as build up energy to perform evades and eventually the Energy Burst technique where they flip the Core up and fill it with energy to hit it incredibly hard. However, they all also have three extra abilities that help set them apart from the rest of the cast. Some will be focused more defensively to help them play the role of a goalie, like the giant hamster Dubu who can roll out a large log like a barrier or do a slam to bring the puck to an immediate stop. Juno, the slime from space, is able to create little blobs around the field who will either attack players who get near or snatch the Core themselves and fire it where Juno desires. These are some of the more interesting examples of what abilities can entail though. The game’s leading lady Juliette for example has a big punch, a dash attack, and a flurry of punches, it able to let her sometimes cover more range or move quickly, but they’re all pretty basic ways of hitting the puck or alternatively trying to wear down opponents since you can temporarily remove players from the field by depleting their stagger bar. Estelle works like a sniper by firing a crystal shot from afar or a fan of crystals, but these also feel like fairly basic options. What’s more, all three of the special abilities a character has need time to recharge after use, which is reasonable in terms of balancing some of the stronger ones, but it also can leave you with little to do beyond knock the Core around with basic hits if they’re all on cooldown.

 

Using your abilities at smart times is obviously the intended remedy, but that also means there is still time you are left with essentially just testing your basic reflexes. Hitting the puck is at least responsive enough you can angle it towards your intended target in a hurry, passes or shots on goal not too hard to aim even with all six players running around the field. Characters can be a bit slow, another understandable touch since the Core needs to be able to slip past sometimes or the game would never end, but another unfortunate element emerges when characters cluster up. The game is viewed with one team’s goal on the left and the other on the right, the entire field always visible. This zoomed out perspective provides you the visual information on where the Core is and where players are, but seeing abilities can sometimes be a little tough. You’ll definitely be able to see and hear when the oni guitarist Vyce starts playing her guitar to damage things all around her, but it’s a bit hard to see the fireballs of Corestrike champion Kai or the lizard alien Drek’ar’s gunshots when people are close or getting hit by them so swiftly the animation doesn’t even show. Tracking enemy cooldowns is an important skill, and while being able to parse the chaos is definitely something that sets players apart, it does feel like more pronounced effects or sound cues could have helped so you don’t have to guess which move hit you too quickly to see its animation unfold.

 

An occasional lack of clarity doesn’t always dampen the fun of Corestrike though, Omega Strikers able to provide some intense matches when the players on the field are evenly matched. A typical match of Corestrike is won when a team manages to score three sets, each set made up of 3 points with points resetting after a set is earned. Despite this potentially leading to a lot of goals in a match before a victor is chosen, each round of play does have a 60 second timer before Overtime activates, the puck then moving more quickly after it’s hit to try and force a goal. Interestingly, unlike in its air hockey inspiration, the goal is initially closed, and to open it you must hit specific areas that change between the arenas. The most basic stadium, Ahten City, just has a large barrier in front of the goal you need to hit once before the goal gate opens, but the shape and placement of these barriers can change depending on the arena. Demon Dais has two rings near the middle of each side of the field, a ring needing to be hit twice before the goal opens, while Gates of Obscura has two triangles jutting out of the goal gate’s center to hit. After a point is scored, barriers will refresh, but once the barriers are down, the goal area is very large and much harder for a goalie to effectively block. This design decision gives you some room for defense when the barriers are being protected but also, like the timer, starts to help push towards a resolution eventually since the goal itself is so wide. Many of these arenas also have special features, like Taiko Temple featuring drums around its edges that bounce the Core away, although Night Market having two bars in the middle feels like it might split the field up a bit too much and slow down matches or discourage team play for it. The impressive gravity well at the center of Atlas’s Lab though is a particularly memorable disruptor, it occasionally coming to life to throw off puck strikes and bursting outwards should anyone hit the orb at its center.

One element that can help matches feel a bit different comes from a gear system and something known as Awakenings. At the start of a match you can pick some helpful equipment to boost your abilities a touch, but between sets, everyone gets to pick an Awakening from a randomized set. The player order means some people will get to grab the good stuff first, but you can start to work towards builds that suit your character or designated role. A projectile character can cover a lot more of the battlefield with the right Awakenings, you can start increasing your speed if you feel like the Core slips by too often, or you can even up your size as a goalie to make it easier to hit the puck from a distance. Some characters won’t have use for Awakenings that increase the size of created objects or you might be left picking something simple like reducing the cooldown on a specific power, but you can also try to grab something to keep it from another player for some counterplay. Not every Awakening feels impactful in isolation, but seeing longer matches start to lean towards more exaggerated characters can be a fun boost to the game’s energy in what could have been a drawn out fight otherwise.

 

Omega Strikers is unfortunately lacking in different modes though, meaning you’re mostly going to be playing regular matches or competitive battles. Quick Play will speed things up by providing awakenings automatically, but things like the silly modifiers of High Tea Hijinks were only part of a limited time mode and the game has been left behind with no future updates planned. There are things to work towards though, not all of the characters playable from the get-go but you can earn reasonable credit towards unlocking them by varying up who you play as and completing refreshing daily and weekly goals that are often not too unusual. A great deal of the cosmetics though are further out of reach, the game stingier with its alternate currencies that go towards things like new outfits, different effects when you score a goal, or emoticons you can activate while on the field. There are a good deal of these based around memes, and while it can be cute or a bit funny to see one of Omega Strikers’s character performing silly and familiar expression or poses, it can feel like Omega Strikers is again sacrificing a consistent identity by just doing what it considers fun. Beyond things like certain arenas going out of rotation though, it doesn’t feel like meaningful content is kept out of reach, the starting set of players enough to keep you occupied before you can start buying new ones from time to time.

THE VERDICT: Omega Strikers comes up with a more extreme twist of air hockey that can work when all its ideas come together well. The three player teams, each character having their own unique skills, and the focus on breaking the barriers first to open up the goal combine into something that can lead to some intense and energetic matches, but ability cooldowns can slow the fun, abilities can be a bit unclear or underwhelming at times, and the mode variety feels a bit lacking. Awakenings do add a bit of depth to matches, but it also feels like Omega Strikers can’t escape some of the simpler parts of air hockey despite the added flair and superpowers.

 

And so, I give Omega Strikers for Xbox Series X…

An OKAY rating. You can have matches in Omega Strikers where victory is only clinched barely thanks to both teams being on the ball, and you’ll have games where you realize one player is worse than everyone else and it’s just a matter of playing through to the inevitable loss. Such is the way with games dependent on multiplayer and teamwork with nothing else to give, but Omega Strikers also is held back a bit by trying to find the limits for what can make a sport fair. Since most abilities can also damage players and potentially remove them from play for a bit, a lot of them have to be limited somehow, but since they’re also how you hit the Core, you’re often going to be reduced to plainer hits that can’t advance play too much on their own. You can try and set things up with a teammate, and when ability use leads to an interesting shift in play or a goal, it does feel satisfying. A character like the young inventor Luna using her ability to zip across the field to slam it in can be very fun to land and it has to be reined in to preserve the game’s fairness and make that moment special, but it feels like Omega Strikers could have also tried to find more ways to make the time between ability uses more interesting or alternatively given you smaller skills that can be used quite often. Waiting for a power to come back online, throwing it out, and then being left waiting to have anything better to do than smacking the puck away can diminish how interesting moment to moment play is, although perhaps also varying up how basic strikes are handled could have diversified things. In a first-person hero shooter for example, heroes will bring different standard weapons or movement options to the table despite having limits on their more flashy or powerful skills, but the fundamentals in this sport stuck to the mold. There are times when the only difference between playing as the muscle-bound warrior Asher and the tiny magician Finii boils down to an infinitesimal difference in the range of their basic strike, the game also feeling like it could benefit from passives or more adventurous attack effects on top of clearer signalling on what’s going on when a power is used.

 

Omega Strikers does allow for more strategic play because ability use can be so important and Awakenings can alter the best way to approach a character’s role, and it’s actually not too hard to see why a passionate competitive scene was formed because things can click when teams are evenly matched. At the same time, certain elements in Omega Strikers also mean moments of excitement might not come together too often. There were a lot of considerations necessary for evolving air hockey into something more appealing, skillful, and robust, and a few experimental ideas don’t drag this free to play sports game down on their own. A desire to keep innovating on that air hockey core could have pushed this title further, and maybe then Omega Strikers could have found and kept a larger audience.