Fast Striker review for PS Vita, PS4

While I can?t say this with absolute certainty, I?d be willing to bet that Fast Striker is the only game whose list of platforms consists of the Neo Geo MVS, Sega Dreamcast, and, now, PS4 and the Vita. If that?s not a unique combination, I don?t know what would be.

Mind you, that?s also the only thing that?s remotely unique about Fast Striker.

In every other respect, this is as paint-by-numbers a shmup as you?re ever likely to see. You?re piloting a rocket ship, shooting lasers at enemies coming from all sides of the screen, and you have to dodge all the obstacles in your way. There?s the odd ?secret? to uncover, but none of them are even remotely interesting or change the gameplay in any way. Everything moves so quickly that the screen quickly becomes an eyesore, but at the same time, nothing is so visually interesting that it stands out.

If you?re looking for anything positive — beyond the fact that it works — there is the fact that you have the option of playing on a compressed screen to mimic the feeling of playing it at an arcade. And you also have four different difficulty options, which range from incredibly easy to controller-smashingly hard, which means that, in theory, the game is accessible for everyone from newcomers to shmup veterans.

But I don?t know why you?d bother with Fast Striker unless you had a shmup-related compulsion. As I said up top, the only thing interesting about it is the list of platforms on which it?s appeared, and once you get beyond the five seconds it?ll take you to read that and say, ?Huh, interesting,? to yourself, you?ll have exhausted everything worth knowing about this game.

EastAsiaSoft provided us with a Fast Striker PS Vita code for review purposes.