Hyper Sentinel

Genre: Shmup

Players: 1, Online Leaderboards

.

Review:

Hyper Sentinel is a Shmup that positions itself as a spiritual successor to the classic Commodore 64 title Uridium, a title I never played. So if you’re looking for comparisons to the game this is based on, look elsewhere. But as for how the game fares in its own right, read on.

The premise of this game is that you’re flying your small fighter over a larger spacecraft while enemy units swarm you and try to fight you off, with you trying to pick off targets on the large spacecraft until a boss unit emerges to defend the ship. Take out the boss, and the ship blows up and you move on to the next level. While you’re fighting, you can flip your chip around and fly in the opposite direction, and much of the strategy of the game comes from knowing when and how to use that ability.

As for how it plays… honestly, I found it hard to really get into this game. Your ship moves frustratingly fast, making it sometimes difficult to hit what you’re aiming for unless you make multiple passes. On top of that, the way your ship’s shields recharge cuts down a lot on the challenge level of the game. At least a few times playing this, I found myself thinking “that’s it?” upon completing a mission. It’s one of my great frustrations in a game to be doing well at it and not fully understand why I’m doing well.

The game makes use of old-school 8-bit style graphics that work well enough, but in this game can get a bit overly-busy and frantic making it hard to keep track of everything, which some will undoubtedly see as a flaw and some as a feature. For me, it just added to my confusion with the game.

In the end, I can’t say what Uridium fans will think of Hyper Sentinel, but for me, I just couldn’t see the appeal, especially since the Switch has a wealth of Shmup options right now that I’d rather spend my time on.

tl;dr – Hyper Sentinel is a Shmup that aims to be the spiritual sequel to the classic game Uridium, and while fans of that original title may enjoy it, I honestly found it to be a bit of a confusing mess, and there are plenty of other games in this genre on the Switch I’d rather be playing.

Grade: C-

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}