Highway Hunter (MS-DOS)

No need to guess what kind of game this is, it's playing a demo behind the menu.

That does sound like a bit of a downside. Either these Axis folks are comically inept, or they don't exactly have humanity's best interests at heart.

Our protagonist was a humble freedom fighter, until he was captured and forced by the aliens to develop a super car prototype which would finally give them the capability to hunt down and destroy all humanity once and for all!

I guess they just couldn't be bothered to wait for the terraforming to finish killing all human life.

Unfortunately for them they forgot to lock the garage door.

And now we've driving around in a state of the art prototype super weapon we can use to strike back at our invaders, and shoot lasers at road barriers.

The full game has three episodes to choose from. I might as well start at the beginning with the shareware episode.

Unit 1-6247... hey that's me! Or maybe it refers to my car, I don't know.

Right away I lose a hit point by hitting a wall. I don't even think it was my fault, I just immediately lost a bar of energy as the level started.

It seems I have to absolutely make sure I do not touch the sides of the road (or anything else for that matter). A lot of the enemies tend to stick to the roads too, rather than flying at me in waves. Other than that it's a fairly typical shoot 'em up.

Wow. I honestly thought I'd make it further than that. 16,000... that's like 16 kills, I did terrible!

Dying put me right back at the start of the level, but I've switched from keyboard to mouse control and now I seem to be doing better. Plus now I know I can just hold the fire button down. I've even (temporarily) managed to upgrade my pathetic guns to slightly less pathetic missiles.

I'm struggling against these turrets at the side of the road though. I don't dare get close enough to the edge to shoot them, but they have no problems shooting me when I race past.

Agh, dammit. Bloody helicopters blocking the road. I would complain that they should be in the air, not getting in my way, but now that I think about this entire road is in the air.

Weirdly my car seems to think it's an aircraft itself, sliding through diagonal turns instead of turning into them.


SIX DEATHS LATER.

I've finally reached the first boss! And this fight is ridiculous. I've been dodging the green side lasers, dodging the green middle lasers, dodging the green side lasers... over and over for what seems like minutes.

It'd be nice if they could at least give the enemy a health bar so I can see how much progress I'm making.

Well, I managed to blow the turret off at least. Stage one of the boss fight completed! Shame I didn't survive stage 2, but hey at least I have an excuse to turn the game off now.


LATER.

Just because I'm stubborn I went all the way back and defeated that damn boss. It took forever, and it wasn't fun in the slightest, but now I can finally see what the next level's like.

It's pretty much the same, and the boss is just as boring to fight. Also it killed me.

Well I might as well check out the other two episodes while I have the game installed.


ONE LEVEL LATER.

Even with my super upgraded ion gun this boss fight is taking way longer than I'd like. Fortunately it's not overly challenging. At least not on medium difficulty.


ONE PAINFULLY LONG BOSS FIGHT LATER.

Huh? On this level the boss shows up at the start. And then just sort of hangs around obscuring the top of the screen and being annoying. He's completely immune to my attacks, so I guess I just have to... tolerate him until the end of the episode.



LATER.

Episode 2 seems to be going way better for me so far, mainly because there's been lots more U power ups around to upgrade my weapons. The more power ups I grab, the better my guns get. From lasers to dual lasers, to missiles... etc.  And the better my guns get, the easier it is for me to collect the gun upgrades.

With this ion gun I can obliterate everything before it even makes it onto the screen. Which cheers me up a little at least. Now I can concentrate on not hitting the walls.

The power up effect is only temporary though. Once the upgrade wears off I'm downgraded a level, then another, until eventually I'm back down to square one. So basically I need to keep collecting the U power ups.

It'd be really nice if the game could throw a couple more my way about now. I'm so underpowered that the enemies are actually making it on screen before I can shoot them.



LATER.

Another boss fight, and it's taken so long so far that all my upgrades have gone. Now I have to kill this thing with the crappy laser. Which is kind of like digging a hole with a toothpick.

Except less fun.

Well I could continue back at the start of that level. But then I'd have to play it again.


One last episode left to play and then I can be done with it.

Freedom looks weird. Ice towers, purple mountains, and whatever the hell those things are meant to be.

Wait, 'the final chapter, your escape begins'? Surely my escape began two episodes ago, when I escaped.

Episode 3 is very similar to the other two. Except this time I've got no patience left at all. I was killed by (probably) invulnerable rocks long before I made it to the boss.



It's not the worst shoot 'em up I've played so far, but it's not something I'll ever want to play again either. Next game.