So I Tried… Hyper Fighters

Each edition of So I Tried… I will try a game that I have never tried before. Will I find something new to love? Will I find something new to despise? I'll take a full half hour, no matter how bad it gets or how badly I do, to see if this is the game for me. This time I went for the PC version of Hyper Fighters.

What I thought it was

A jet-fighter game more linear than Ace Combat, due to it literally saying it’s an on-the-rails shooter on the Steam page. As with some recent games, I have nothing else to say about it, as I’ve done no research on it. It’s the only way to not cloud my judgement. I like jet-fighters as much as anyone who’s grown bored of jet-fighters, having lived on multiple RAF bases growing up. As such, it’s left me with a love-hate relationship with them -- I love the speed and explosions, I hate that they are related to the reason I barely remember my best friends from when I was six, seven, eight and nine.

What it actually is

As advertised, it’s an on-the-rails jet-fighter game. You are part of… I’ve no idea. A task force, maybe? And it’s up to you to destroy wave after wave of jets and boats as you make your way towards the end-boss. It’s like an updated 1942, with much better graphics and less ability to move out of the way of bullets. You’re helpless to stop ammunition hitting you, which will result in a fast death -- except for rockets, which you can shoot out of the sky. You’re given multiple lives and an assortment of aircraft to use, but it’s quite boring.

Will I keep playing

There’s no strategy to the game, it’s just ‘shoot these moving things until you have to shoot the hell out of this monstrous vehicle’. And the story is non-existent, apart from the couple of lines uttered before a mission. Take out a pirate, destroy a bomber -- why it’s up to you and only you is anyone’s guess, because the enemy is capable of launching entire fleets against you… I honestly didn’t enjoy this very much, but then the last rail-shooter I played was Operation Wolf for a reason...