Honestly, you can't go wrong with Space Shot, but I can't blame you if you end up using it as an ash tray.
Forgiving the fact that the plot has absolutely NO back ground information whatsoever, here's what is known at the start:
It's the future of space travel and some big space empire in the SOL (that's our galaxy) is fighting a big war against some other empire that specializes in mech technology. You play as a mercenary pilot, questionably named Cyber Spears, a long-haired quiet talking pilot dressed up as Keaneu Reeves in the first Matrix movie. Spears is teamed up with two other mercenaries who are being paid big bucks to help blast up the mech-technology based empire on occasion and the three pretty much do this constantly until they find themselves wrapped up in a sinister plot of manipulation.
It's obvious this game won't be winning any rewards in the least seeing how most of its twists and turns are pretty infinitesimal and it's difficult to feel for the characters despite some of them being borderline unlikable, yet the developers seem to care and understand the whole story so much to make highly detailed and adequately made FMV sequences that try to advance the plot. It's like AI Games based the plot directly after an anime series from the late eighties that was cancelled before the final season.
If anything, the game sometimes feels like it was inspired by Cowboy Bebop, what with it being in space, the soundtrack's occasional jazzy/blues tunes during meaningless dialogue, the main characters piloting stupid looking space craft and some of the characters looking and acting so boring you wish you were stuck with the minor extra characters before they got mercilessly gunned down at the beginning of the episode, but most of this only refers to Spike and the fourth episode of the TV series, so that's just me.
Also, Space Shot answers the question of whether games like Zero Wing would've been better if their plot constantly popped up between games and thus actually felt like something other than an excuse to blow things up. That answer is a big fat NO. Especially not from a game where you're taking orders from a 13 year old girl whose last name just happens to be McFlight and the monstrous looking comic relief character just won't shut up.
The gimmicks of game play this time around consist of the Radiant Silver Gun style of game play in that there are absolutely no form of pick ups available during the game as you start out with every weapon and attack from the get-go. Your fighter is equipped with additional guns that can be positioned to fire in front of you, above and below or behind you. You can also use the same guns to position a laser-targeted system to lock on to multiple targets and blast them with homing missiles depending on how wide the targeting system is stretched, though sadly this is only a forward firing weapon: every time you try to use it behind you, the guns swiftly shift to the front of the ship. You can also use a boost ability to quickly ram into streams of enemies or a large laser beam weapon to clear bigger enemies. As fine as all of this is, it does meet a few design choices that kind of strike the dog-fighting down.
For one, your enemies seem to take advantage of their ability to weave in and out of combat which makes kamikaze hard to avoid. Your star fighter is also terribly slow, which is bizarre considering its size and shape and having a boost ability for a quick burst of speed isn't very reassuring, especially when after boosting, your ship is quickly vulnerable to attacks which also makes the ram-attacks hard to endure.
Some of the sounds in Space Shot do require some kudos, because the sounds of giant mechs hovering after you, ships exploding and giant laser beams cracking through sub-space is quite enthralling to hear. However, some of the noises will get on your nerves, especially the sound of your energy sirens blooping when you have to wait for your beam gun to charge-up and the sound of enemies being damaged does sound a little hollow at times, but otherwise, the sound is pretty good.
The soundtrack has a plus and a negative as the music accompanies the action extremely well: the game's soundtrack consists of an electronic jazz beat appropriate for just about every game of its genre that is hard hitting, offers a variety of good beats and at times incredibly catchy. The soundtrack is also a wee bit darker and more threatening during boss fights, so at least you can't mark the game as not correlating with the game's setting or events properly. The only problem with the soundtrack is that it is often drowned out by the sound effects and there're no options to turn down the volume to either one or even listen to the music in BGM mode, so despite being good, the soundtrack is given little credit.
As far as 3D shooters go, Space Shot is quite acceptable, sometimes the backgrounds look like they were thrown together at the last minute, yet they still manage to look good enough and you and your enemies stand out remarkably well. The only problem is that it's hard to tell which enemies are a part of the background and which ones are in the foreground. There were moments where I found the answer far too late and I found myself getting creamed by the nose of a small ship. Also the enemy shots lack detail, but for the most part they stand out so it's easy to dodge them. The FMV graphics are quite good as well and the human characters look nice (except when the comic relief character goes into panic mode). If anything there seems to be a strange texture design to some of the character's skin tones which almost makes them look like they were carved out of wood, but otherwise the graphics get the job done all right.
At times it feels a lot like Space Shot was copied and pasted from Thunder Force V, but was changed in certain factors that the developers felt would've made the game better.
The space fighters of the mercenary trio look almost exactly identical to the Vasteel space fighters of Thunder Force V and some of the weapons are even copy pasted on with the appropriate changes like the beam weapon and the shots that fire from the enemies tend to move in and out of the background resulting in constant panic-fire. And I don't mind being the only person to notice this, but the fourth boss looks WAY too much like the mini-boss to the fourth level of Thunder Force V, just with two legs less and different attacks.
As I said before, the plot and characters to Space Shot aren't exactly likable. At times the story and soundtrack try to focus on the comic relief character so he can make idiotic comments about how much he'd rather be surfing. Though the game does try to advance its invisible plot into 'shocking' twists, its attempts are ultimately futile especially when the plot suggests player apathy to the point explosion. But I have to admit that despite having lame characters, the voice acting for each of them is incredibly talented, especially when they make little gasps during moments of realization and shock.
Okay, so all the voice acting is in Japanese save for the words 'Hello' and 'Honey' (all of which are spoken by a robot), but once again it shows that the developers actually had a semblance of care for the presentation of their weaknesses. I note this mostly because I find it strange how an apathetic and tiring plot line with weak characters is chosen to be presented with great voice acting because in most games the opposite tends to happen where a game will have some of the best story and characters, but some of the most atrocious actors to voice the characters.
When you come down to it, Space Shot is one of those budget game titles that pop-up at the dying point of popular demand, where the moment the game comes out, the genre it represents is no longer hot-stuff. Which is sad to say, because the shoot em' up genre has been in gaming history so long, it's sad to see something so prevalent die out between advancing graphics and people's need for easier games that focus more on the graphic, in your face style of shooting between different perspectives, but in most cases not involving space-fighter jets dodging waves of bullets.
Simultaneously, Space Shot is mildly fun only due to its own notable flaws, but at least it's trying to represent the shmup genre when it was still popular in the 3D age. So if you want to add to your collection of shoot em' ups and want something fairly current at a low price then you can't go wrong with Space Shot, but I can't blame you if you end up using it as an ash tray.