Striker Modes

Genre: Combat Flight Simulator

Players: 1

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Review:

Striker Modes is a Combat Flight Simulator released on Nintendo Switch in 2022. This game presents players with various scenarios ranging from historic to futuristic, and in each one they must take out as many enemy aircraft as possible before being taken out themselves.

This isn’t immediately apparent upon starting the game. There are no instructions or tutorial given to the player, and depending on which game mode you choose, you may be fighting alongside other friendly aircraft and turret emplacements, and the game doesn’t make it clear who is a friend and who is a foe. Ultimately, I found that the best guide was that foes are targetable while friends are not.

The core gameplay here is decent enough, but unexceptional. Depending on the game mode you select, you’ll have a selection of weapons ranging from machine guns and missiles to lasers. These weapons never run out of ammunition, so you’re best off just finding out which is your favorite for the game mode you’re playing and sticking with that.

The main problems in this game are from the camera and the overall game structure. Players have multiple options for camera angles, but the majority of them are bad. By default, you’ll be using a view from above and behind your aircraft, which doesn’t give a good sense of how far you are from objects beneath you, making it easy to accidentally crash into the ground. Only one of the game modes here offers a first-person view where you can see where you’re shooting, and none of the game modes offer an unobstructed first-person view.

I suppose I should talk about those “game modes” I keep referring to. Rather than having individual levels, Striker Modes lets players select one of multiple game modes, with each game mode having its own distinct setting and enemies, as well as a specific aircraft for you to fly. These include a World War II-style dogfight over a barren stretch of land at night, fighting as a tiny labrador-sized jet in a busy city, or fighting as a futuristic spacecraft amongst an armada in a cloudy sky. Each of these game modes is endless – you’ll keep fighting endlessly-spawning enemies and trying to rack up a high score until you take enough damage to get a game over.

Unfortunately, no matter which game mode you choose, there’s no variety in the gameplay – the way that game mode plays in the first thirty seconds will be exactly the same as the way it plays twenty minutes later, if you haven’t quit out of boredom by then.

The presentation here isn’t bad, but it’s not great. There’s no music, and the sound is fairly simple. As for the graphics, what’s here is also fairly simple, but decent enough when you’re not in a game mode that’s barren and boring to look at. There are even some decent lighting effects, though nothing fancy. Having said that, the framerates do noticeably drop at times, and I think these maps are purchased assets (one map featuring a military facility looked a lot like the map from the abysmal First-Person Shooter, Team Troopers.

Overall, Striker Modes is a functional Combat Flight Simulator, but it is not a game that’s likely to entertain players for very long. While there is a good variety of game modes here, within each game mode the gameplay is simple and repetitive, with a bad camera. You have better options for Combat Flight Simulators on Nintendo Switch.

tl;dr – Striker Modes is a Combat Flight Simulator with various scenarios ranging from historic to futuristic, where players must take out as many enemies as possible before being destroyed. While the variety of game modes is good, each of these game modes quickly gets repetitive and boring, with things made worse by a terrible camera. You have better options than this on Nintendo Switch.

Grade: D

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