TRASH-O-WEEN PRESENTS: CRAPPER-5
TRASHSTORM IS NOT A REAL STORY.
IS NOT EVEN GOOD FICTION.
IS TRASH GAME REVIEWS.
ALL OF THE GAMES FEAT...FE...FEATURED
WOULD CAUS...C...ERROR...ERROR...ERROR...
ERROR...ERROR...ERROR...ERROR...ERROR
...ERROR...ERROR...ERROR...ERROR...
ERROR...ERROR...ERROR...
That pic surely gave you the creeps, but trust me, the horror is just starting. It's time for Halloween again, and this time we will make a different approach in terror. Forget the common clichés like the "Dracula Bach composition", thunder, wolf howls, hawk screeches, bats, spiders, the undead or ghosts, Because the true horror can be found not just in terror-themed stories, UFOs, spooky imagery or ghost videos, but in your friendly console online store. Yeah. Everytime you explore the seemingly trusty Steam or the online store of the PlayStation, Switch or XBOX you don't know what you can find, especially when its all about indie developers. Could be an unexpected gem like Graze Counter GM, Drainus or Danmaku Unlimited 3, but also there's atrocities that can only be described as "Terrors of the Night". Atrocities waiting for the first idiot who gaves them their hard earned money just to receive bad quality games and ruin their gaming night.
In the song "Teardrops" by Bring Me The Horizon, the first verse (censored in Forza Horizon 5) says: "We hurt ourselves for fun". For this Halloween (or Trash-O-Ween) review looks like I'll hurt myself for your fun playing and reviewing the following fiasco of a shmup.
There's bad games, very bad games, horrible games, unbearable games and this: The typical example of a developer who makes a shmup thinking they're Tecno Soft or Taito and end up doing unsurmountable abominations. Here's a perfect example of what I mean: Hyper-5 by Hyper Productions.
Sounds like fun, but it's gonna be a hellish ride.
The first thing to do in this game is to pick a skill level. The Progression Mode is the Easy level of the game increasing the damage dealt to the enemies and your resistance, along with gathering resources a little faster, while Precision Mode is the Hard level, making you more brittle to the enemy. It is also the way the game should be played. For a shmupper who faced challenges "right out of the box" this will be the immediate choice.
They obviously don't want you in this summer vacation.
The gameplay is atrocious. Lemme tell ya, you'll be in for a lot of suffering. To begin with, your ship has an HORRIBLE firing rate and a very low power level at the point that level 1 will be consisting of dodging and surviving rather than destroying things, including the boss. In a good game like Blazing Star, letting the enemy escape was synonym of failure (unless you did it on purpose for exploiting Bonus Jewels like the Stage 3 boss). In Hyper-5, that feeling of incompetence for being unable to destroy the boss is more of a synonym of "Bad designed" gameplay at the point that it wasn't your fault, but from developers stupidity. You've might think "Why you didn't used the Sub-weapons?", even when they're used, your missiles take a quite long time to reload, compare that with RayForce where the Lock-On Laser is available again as soon as its fired and hits a target. Now imagine that if RayForce's lasers had to wait like three seconds before the used "Slot" is available again. As the key factor in gameplay it will make the game hard an almost unplayable.
Despite the problems, the game gives you a few things in your favor. To begin with, your Special Weapons are unlimited but they have to reload, and destroying enemies drops power ups, but you have to destroy formations to obtain them pretty much like Darius II and Super Nova. These are very power ups because they will provide you with weapon strength, replenish energy and even adding support units if you have them. Keep in mind, if you die in the stage you get them, you're not gonna get them back, they're forever gone. Speaking of dying, you'll be losing lives very fast since this is one of those many indie shups that suffers from the atrocious "Turridamage" (Its been a while since I didn't said the "T-Word") where you can take damage non-stop since there's no temporary invincibility after taking a hit, just like in the first Turrican. A simple mistake like this becomes a critical flaw in this game, and when you die, if you hadn't reached the checkpoint, you'll be kicked back at the beginning of the stage (you've been warned R-Typers). While you are granted spare lives, this game pulls what I call "The Super Mario Bros. flaw" where the "Life x1" is the zero of the game. Another problem will be the controls. Like in Natsuki Chronicles, if you control the ship with the Analog Stick, it will slightly go up or down when you're moving left or right, but if you control it with the D-Pad you don't get that problem. But the mother of all problems lies in the unfair traps in stages 3 onwards, where you have to pay a lot of attention to the stage since there's a lot of microscopic mines that you'll might think they're part of the background, but they're actually lethal. Stage 4 has obstacles that are hard to notice due to the special effects plastered on the screen and stage 5 is a swarm of enemies that will definitely take you down if you're not powered up enough, combined with the boss' sudden fast missile attack that seems to be random directioned, its gonna be your demise in your first attempts.
Having a powerful ship will be a viacrucis.
In the style of U.N. Squadron, this game has a store where you can buy weapons and ship upgrades, and even downgrade those you don't want. I think that one sounds absurd since if you're aiming to fully upgrade your ship, you'll end up buying all the things available. When you first play the game you'll be granted 2500 UP (Upgrade Points) to purchase what you think your Hyper-5 needs. By default, your standard weapon, the "Forward" can only increase its Reload Speed (Firing rate) and add an additional bullet making it a Twin Shot. But you have to spend the points wisely because you also need to upgrade your missiles. You can also purchase Health upgrades to increase your lifebar size and 1ups (Retries) in order to survive a little longer. Once you've bought what you need, you're ready for your mission. Keep in mind. You can access the store after completing a level and even when you're not playing the game. This sounds like a good idea if it wasn't for the annoying money grinding requirement. Like Ginga Force, you're gonna be playing the same stages (and surely dying on the final level) again and again and again in order to fully upgrade 1 weapon because the UP prices are on the thousands, making it more like Omega Strikers than Ginga Force and Natsuki Chronicles altogether. If you hated Ginga Force for that, then this would be a good enough reason to stay away from Hyper-5.
Heard a BANG! BANG! BANG! Down they go.
It's just a job you do.
Surviving levels are not the only thing to do in the game. Each stage has its list of "Challenges" which grant you a good dose of rewards depending on what they require to be unlocked. From Upgrade Points to new weapons waiting to be purchased, this is the way the game wants you to keep your hands busy with this game. This temporary helps with the UP grinding you're gonna be suffering through your first playthroughs.
Now let's talk about getting new weapons. Once you're get enough challenges unlocked, the game will give you a new subweapon: The Tech Bay. This is a subweapon that, unlike the Special Weapon's semi-infinite ammo, it consumes its own Megaman-styled energy bar which is replenished by enemy-dropped items. Also, you can get support pods called Outriders which are the Thunder Force-like Claw/CRAW that provide you both offensive and defensive capabilities acting as shields, but the basic type can be destroyed while others don't. Like your weaponry, the Tech Bay and Outriders can be upgraded by buying their respective upgrades in the store.
Kids, Remember This: Red means "Hard", Blue means "Easy".
On levels 2 and 5 you'll be granted the option of taking a splitting path. Depending on what you'll choose, the difficult will be. The default option of the game is the red marked "Upper Route" which is the hardest path, while the blue marked path is the "Lower Route" and the easiest path. These decisions will determine how many enemies and intrincated paths you've might take in the mentioned stages.
Looks like someone doesn't want you to win the game.
After killing the final boss, it takes you down before you can warp to safety and during your warp flight, the ship is on a constant flatspin leading the doomed Hyper-5 pilot's fate unknown, while a new fighter called Ultra-6 picks the SOS without answering the cliffhanger. But the bullshit from this game is not over yet.
Sorry pilot. Your victory is in another game.
After the staff roll, you'll be getting the last results of the game and one more "Playing Tip". If you've finished the game in "Progression Mode" the game will ask you to play on Precision Mode. ¿And for what? To get a message inviting you to play the Arcade Mode? Fuck that. Is like the game said "Thanks for playing, but your happy ending is in another game. You'll have to deal with it with this results screen and a hint. You're welcome."
Talking about having the odds and time against you...
Arcade Mode is pretty much the same as the regular game with the only difference of having power-up mechanics in the style of an arcade game combined with Precision Mode rules, Time Trial takes the concept of "You against the timer" in a different approach: The idea here is to clear the level within the time limit, but you can obtain extra time by picking time increasing items dropped by killing entire enemy formations, and believe it or not, there's boss fights on this mode. While the game offers two different missions, you'll be facing the same problems as in the regular game: Bad fire rate and Turridamage. If Turridamage doesn't kill you, you'll be out of time due to the horrible fire rate of your ship.
Like Taurian Defense, it relies on lying to the players saying it is "inspired by classics from the “golden era” of the 90's". COMPLETE BULLSHIT, Axelay, U.N. Squadron and Super E.D.F. play much better than this. Hyper-5 is more like the Milli Vanilli lip sync fail, every fucking second in the god damned game is basically "Girl you know it's Girl you know it's Girl you know it's Girl you know it's Girl you know it's" until you die or finish the game and uninstall it after getting all the achievements/trophies.
Show them what the Erusean--no,
what fighter pilots are made of!
Graphically, the game breaks with pixel art and makes its best on the CG rendering at the point of being realistic like the XBOX360 on its finest and last titles with heavy textures, cinematic animations on the large enemies and explosive visual effects. This attempt on heavy realism reminds me a lot of Final Star, while 90% of the scenery and the ships are incredibly well made, it is the first underwater level which suffers of lack of details as we have a flat blue background that feels empty making it the game's major offender in the graphic department.
In order to make the game more alive and realistic, there's short cutscenes that rather than focus on deep lore, they are more of action packed battles with missiles flying and enemies being deployed against you. Most gamers will say this is more "Arcade like", but it wouldn't hurt anyone if the game had a little lore to learn about Hyper-5's world.
Errors of Reality: Multicolored shadows.
One of the weirdest things of this game is the messed up shadow of the Hyper-5 as it appears like a yellow-orange checkerboard as if it was a badly programmed game or something. This bug seems to happen on the XBOX version, 'cos I've checked the PlayStation 4 release, and the shadow appears as a realistic shadow. I don't know if this was fixed on an update 'cos its been a hell of a lot of time (and counting) since I've played the XB1 version.
The music is in fact the second redeeming quality of the game. As it tries to be like the score of a movie with epic notes combined with techno-industrial beats and even military-like drum rolling on the main menu and the weapon select screens, but the epicity disappears as soon as you hit the action on the first level as we have this techno-trance soundtrack that sounds like an early 2000's videogame. Stage 3 is the major offender of the game, is almost musicless if it wasn't for those low note hummings in an attempt to make it sounds like "Underwater" to fit the underwater stage. Stage 4 sounds like the instrumental segments of a hip-hop song of the Snoop Dog era and the final stage is an approach to techno-industrial to fit with the factories and platforms in the background. The voice acting. By God, it's terrible, as if the actress sounds like if she was doing her few lines just to get paid and get out of the game development. But with all the flaws mentioned before, this is another example of how great graphics and music doesn't make a good game or amends for a bad one.
HYPER-CURIOSITIES
- Although it is depicted as a fictional planet, 4GDT is actually the Earth. If you look very closely in the intro cutscene you can notice the Himalaya and even the Mediterranean Sea.
Looks like Shizuka's right this time, Nina.
With horrible damage handicaps, awful firepower, frustrating Upgrade Point grinding, false advertising blurb and that "craptastic" ending that throws all your efforts through the window, Hyper-5 is, well, another addition to the list of disappointments and horrors of a shmupper's life. If life asks me "What do you want?" here's my answer: HOW 'BOUT A DIFFERENT FUCKING GAME!! ¿Now you understand why exploring the depths of an online store can be the worst of the "Night Terrors"? When your money goes down the shitter because the shmup that you've bought thinking it will be classic turns out to be videogame fecal matter of the worst kind THAT is an unspeakable horror because you're not gonna see those 6 bucks again. Six bucks wasted in vain feeding a C-Grade indie developer encouraging it to make more atrocious games.
Calling this game "Natsuki Chronicles gone wrong" feels like if you're praising Hyper-5. You'd be better off playing Natsuki Chronicles or even the classic U.N. Squadron instead of this. Just stay the fuck away from Hyper-5 unless you want both you and your console library to be up your necks in shit.
Calamity. That's what this is. This is what it had to be, right? Right? By God...