Striker is a basic clone of the Atari console classic space game, Defender. In this particular rendition of Defender, the user will actually be a helicopter pilot instead of one running the stereotypical small geometrically designed space ship. The landscape is all two dimensional and the game is a side scroller, similar to the game that inspired it. This game was made specifically for the MS-DOS operating system and was distributed as freeware.
There are five increasingly difficult levels in Striker and all of them require the user to navigate through some tight tunnels and avoid enemy fire.
There are five different types of aliens that you will be battling, but you will also encounter other threats, such as gun turrets on the surface and also obstacles that will destroy your chopper if you fly into them. Enemies will not only kamikaze you, but they also shoot missiles. To combat these detriments, the user will have a bleak but effective arsenal of bombs and bullets. Bombs are most effective for destroying ground-based enemies, such as the gun turrets, and your bullets do a fine job of taking out enemy alien craft.
Similar to Defender, one of the constant trials of the game involves fuel consumption and you will have to find and
fly over canisters of fuel on the surface to keep your vessel in fuel. If you run out, of course, you crash. This causes loss of life and is not good.
There are four different difficulty settings available in Striker, so it can be tailored to gamers of nearly any skill level. On that note, the gamer is able to tailor the commands to suit his or her preferences, making the controls even easier than most scrolling shooters. He can also customize the way the joystick operates if he is using a joystick as the input device.
There are a few drawbacks to the game, but there are relatively minor, if one keeps in mind that this is a classic game and comparing it to a modern game (in graphical terms) is like the stereotypical comparison of apples to oranges. The one drawback is that there is no random feature available in the levels and every time you play, it will be the same as before. This is not to say that it is not challenging, but it does not have a great deal of replayability for this reason. Overall, however, it is a basic but decent flight sim.
