At E3 2015, we checked out Strike Vector EX, which is the console version of the well-received Strike Vector on the PC. The game wears its inspirations on its sleeve, combining anime-styled transforming war machines and their similarly styled pilots with lightning-fast dogfighting. I played one of the game's 15 single-player missions, a new feature for this iteration, and I found that the gameplay lives up to its inspirations.

The craft you pilot is essentially a VTOL aircraft that's capable of switching between hover and your more conventional aircraft modes. In the aircraft mode, it handles like an extremely fast jet, looping around and covering a lot of distance very quickly. Meanwhile, the VTOL mode lets you remain stationary and turn in place very quickly. Switching between the two is easy — simply holding the left trigger brings you into aircraft mode — and it also factors well into your tactics.

In the mission I played, I was tasked with taking out waves of opposing aircraft with the support of my wingman. Combat in this mission was pretty satisfying thanks to a combination of rewarding accuracy at long distances and mastery of switching between the two modes. Soon enough, I was swooping into the fray, opening up with my Gatling gun to down a couple of enemy craft before switching to VTOL and raking a third with withering fire. Once enemy ships have been shot down, they often don't immediately explode; instead, they burst into flame and smoke, arcing through the air in a fiery trail before finally blowing apart a few seconds later.

My taste was only a brief one, but Strike Vector EX seems to have some solid gameplay. The single-player missions have some promise, and the multiplayer side seems positively intense, but unfortunately, that mode wasn't on display. Strike Vector EX launches this summer for the Xbox One and the PlayStation 4.