Jet Lancer Supersonic dogfights, giant robots

The heart of Jet Lancer is the moment-to-moment feel of the controls. Thrust, afterburn, dodge roll and fire are all separate inputs, and once they click, the jet does what you want the instant you want it.

There is a dodge window right after a hit lands where a well-timed roll can still cancel the damage, and the screen edges flash green when you pull it off. Chain those and you start flying like the anime pilot the game clearly wants you to be. It is easy to learn and genuinely hard to master.

You are Ash Leguinn: badass pilot, highly paid mercenary, flight-school dropout. The day job, shooting down sky pirates, pays the bills. Then mechanized weapons converge on Root City, and Ash has to go from unknown rookie to once-in-a-generation ace across a story campaign of 30 missions and 11 bosses.

The missions vary: escort runs, rival duels, defence scrambles, boss hunts. The writing is anime-flavoured and funny, with a cast that bickers in a comic register, and one of them is a talking cat named Lem who handles your maintenance. Two endings exist, and the true one only opens up in New Game Plus.

Your LANCE is a prototype with hidden potential, and the loadout system lets you shape it your way: 28 guns, payloads and flight components. A machine gun and guided missiles by default, plus specials like a flamethrower for close-range damage, a railgun for instant precision shots, and a coil gun that chains lightning between grouped enemies.

The parts trade style more than raw power: one setup favours durability and forgiving handling, another strips all of that for speed and firepower. The friendly training wheels come off piece by piece, and the jet gets meaner as you get better.