Hyper-5 is a 2-D side scrolling shooter with 3D graphics that look like they came from the late 90s/early 2000s.  You can choose to play an arcade mode where you pick up power-ups, or a story mode where you can upgrade your weapons and ship at the end of each level.  It’s available on all current consoles and PC, but reviewed on PS4 here.

Play control is about what you’d expect.  Move with the L stick, fire with one button, and another button lets you fire a limited secondary weapon.  You can take a few hits before going down, but it’s still very tough, even on the easy settings.  The two modes don’t really play much differently from what I can tell.  Supposedly arcade mode lets you pick up power-ups while the story mode has you getting new ones in between stages.  Both modes let you use points to upgrade things like ship speed, rate of fire, or new weapons.  But I really didn’t notice much difference in the upgrades.

The only thing I really liked about the game are the graphics.  They’re simple, but still clean and look nice.  Everything else about the game isn’t so great.  Your initial rate of fire is so slow and even basic enemies take forever to defeat.  The menus where you pick upgrades aren’t easy to use and it’s hard to figure out what’s highlighted and such.  There are much better 2-D shooters out there you can choose from.

Kid Factor:

Hyper-5 is rated E-10 with ESRB descriptors of Fantasy Violence and Mild Blood.  You can make a lot of spaceships explode but I didn’t see any blood.  Reading skill is helpful for the text and younger gamers may find it too difficult.

Tags: Game Reviews