Star Hunter DX Review

Do you ever find yourself doing something and enjoying it over and over, despite being utter crap at it? While some would argue that this would encompass my gaming life as a whole, I have a particular fondness for Bullet Hell Shmups despite always sucking at them. That’s not to say I can’t get moderately far but the days of lightning fast reaction times are long behind me. I still very much enjoy playing them though, and so when Star Hunter DX dropped in my inbox, it was a no-brainer.

What we have here is a love letter to the sheer insanity that can be a great Shmup. Almost from the word go the screen is full of enemy ships, bullets, collectables, and flashy effects. It’s truly a great sight to behold, and even though it’s bloody hard, a hell of a lot of fun.

Starting out, we play as Luna; a betrayed bounty hunter on a quest for vengeance. There are two characters to unlock but…well…see above. I’ve yet to get them, but to be honest Luna’s is a fantastic default ship as it is. What we’re given to fight with are three modes of attack; a forward facing laser barrage, a wide spreading but slightly weaker gun, and an explosive bomb that emanates from our ship outward. Each assigned to a specific button, we’re able to switch between them in an instant – and good thing too! As mentioned, enemies come at us fast, and it takes a matter of seconds to be completely overwhelmed with very little room for manoeuvre.

Destroying an enemy via gunfire will also remove their bullets from the screen handily, turning them into a blue energy source that we’ll get to in a second. Alternatively, using the bombs will clear enemies and bullets alike for a short range, giving us a millisecond of breathing room. We only get three bombs, but more can be recharged by ‘grazing’ enemy bullets. A small circle around our ship dictates this, and any bullets passing through it begin to fizzle as we drain energy from them to recharge our bombs. It’s not a quick process on its own but considering how many bullets are flying past us very closely at all times it’s usually possible to get a bomb back in good time. Unless we die first, in which case our bombs are refilled for us. Guess which way worked for me…

The action is fast paced then, but luckily we’ve got one more trick up our sleeve – Bullet Time. That blue energy source I mentioned above? This is what fills our Bullet Time meter. Once it’s at least half full, we can hit a button to slow the action down – though it’s still pretty fast moving, in comparison it’s like viewing the game through the Flash’s eyes. This lets us build bomb charge easier as well as simply ducking and weaving in and out between all the carnage. It does drain quickly but can be refilled by collecting the floating astronauts around the levels while we’re still in Bullet Time. It’s 100% necessary to use BT as often as possible not just to survive, but also to rack up the points.

As should be expected, the main payoff in Star Hunter DX is getting that high score. Killing enemies in quick succession builds a combo meter, which in turn increases the points gained for killing more enemies, up to 8X. In Bullet Time however, instead of getting energy we get Gold cubes which are worth far more points than standard kills. Having an 8X multiplier on means that enemies bullets and ships turn into massive Gold cubes, almost making the action harder to see at the cost of getting that ever higher score. It’s a gratifying way to present getting better scores though, and looks incredible when in motion.

Speaking of looks, Star Hunter DX is a fantastic looking game. The colour use, sprites, and effects all hark back to the 32-bit arcade days, and it runs flawlessly smoothly at all times. It’s very retro-80’s-future stylised, but it looks excellent. A pumping soundtrack backs the action perfectly too, with even the repetitive sound effects never getting old or too much. SHDX nails the Bullet Hell Shmup presentation excellently.

Conclusion

And really, Star Hunter DX nails the Bullet Hell Shmup package as a whole. The gunplay is fast, fun, and energetic, the visuals and audio are fantastic, and even though I am terrible at it I cannot stop playing. Shmup fan or not – you need to check this out.

This game was tested and reviewed on Xbox Series X/S. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.