Fast Striker Review: Never-Ending Bullets

To create a good shmup (shoot ’em up), you only need a few key elements: decent movement, interesting enemies, overpowered/varied tools of destruction to keep the game from getting repetitive, co-op play, and larger than life boss encounters. That’s it. Seriously. If you check all of the above boxes, I will probably buy your game or give it a decent score if you send it to me to review. Sadly, Fast Striker doesn’t meet any of the above requirements successfully.

Let’s start off with the first empty box, the movement. This will vary depending on which difficulty/character you choose. The game goes about this in a unique way, with 5 options to choose from, each with their own visual/attack styles and movement speeds. Regardless of whom you choose the ships pilot like you’re drunk with a two to three second delay. Making matters worse, they feature a limited range of movement, making evading the frequent attacks way more challenging than they should be, especially right out of the gate.

The overall visuals appear dated, even for a genre as basic as this. Most of the enemy force appears to be a jumble of shapes and textures that look at home in the original Contra series, with only a few variations standing out as memorable. These enemies are not only boring to look at, but send a constant barrage of bullets your way that flood the screen, making it hard to tell what exactly you are looking at. The backgrounds are even less thrilling, coming across as a top down version of the original Doom with singular scrolling backgrounds that look like they were inspired by old school cartoon chase scenes. All in all, the presentation makes this feel like it was developed for a Game Boy circa 1995 and then ported to the PS4.

Most SHMUPS excel by giving the player larger than life weaponry, even on a temporary basis. While upgrades come regularly, they typically involve shooting the same projectiles at different speeds or directions, all of which seem to take just as long to mow down the opposing forces that are more bullet spongy than the norm for the genre. What I found even more troubling was the lack of a proper bomb attack (another staple of the genre) – replacing this is a singular ability that buffs your movement and damage for a short amount of time.

The biggest missed opportunity, which is also unforgivable at this point, is the complete lack of cooperative play. I thought the one saving grace would be the ability to sit down and try to find some sort of enjoyment from this with my son, which left me sorely disappointed. This has been included on every single shoot ’em up that I have played this console generation. Why they chose to exclude the option while the entire upper right portion of the screen is essentially blank, begging to be filled with player 2’s info is completely beyond me.

The one thing the game does have going for it is the dedication to the purist experience when it comes to the difficulty. Many fans of the genre aspire to beat these with a single credit, and unlike most newer releases, the free play option is turned off. Regardless of which character/difficulty chosen, you’ll be limited to a meager three continues, and once you’re out, you’ll be forced to start over from the beginning.

With so many other options on the market it’s hard to recommend Fast Strikers, as it fails to impress on pretty much every level. From the movement speed to the complete lack of co-op play, this is best left to be forgotten, as quickly as possible.

3 out of 10

Pros

  • A Punishing Challenge for Purists

Cons

  • Horrible Visuals
  • Sluggish and Unresponsive Controls
  • Dull Enemies/Abilities
  • Lack of Difficulty Options
  • Complete Omission of Co-op

Fast Striker was developed by NGDEV and published eastasiasoft. It was released on PS4 and Vira October 16th, 2018 for $6.99. The game was provided to us for review on PS4. If you’d like to see more of Fast Striker, check out the official site.

 

Here at GBG we use a rating method that you are more than likely familiar with – a scale of 1 to 10. For clarification, we intend on using the entire scale: 1-4 is something you should probably avoid paying for; 5-7 is something that is worth playing, but probably not at full price; 8-10 is a great title that you can feel confident about buying. If you have any questions or comments about how we rate a game, please let us know.

Check out OpenCritic for a better idea of how our review stacks against others.

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