Author’s note: all the upcoming Hyper blasters were sent by Hasbro for free for review purposes. Thanks, guys!
At last, Hyper is arriving, due on shelves at the end of June. With it come the inevitable questions. Is the performance superior to Rival? Are the blasters really competitive? Does the initial lineup justify the introduction of a new ammo type?
The answer, after the dust settles, is rather inconclusive. There’s certainly potential, but I’m not as hyped for Hyper as I could be. At the very least, though, the Rush-40 makes a solid argument due to size and capacity.
Pistol Performance, Primary Capacity?
Author’s note: a post about the ammo itself, along with product development, will be coming soon!
The Rush-40 feels solid in hand, with a large comfortable grip and plenty of rails (identical to Rival rails) for ammo storage. One of the cool features of the smaller ammo type is being able to use clip-on reloading tubes. Think of it as paintball speedloaders, but smaller. In this way, you can stick spare ammo wherever is convenient, and reload as needed.
If you’ve operated a Rival pistol, then using the 40 will be no different. Pull back the slide, return it, and fire. A safety switch sits by the trigger, and a priming indicator is at the rear.
Performance In Testing
Just sitting outside with a chronograph, the 40 averaged 116fps, above the box target of 110fps. My sample blaster fired at those speeds quite consistently, as well.
Accuracy, however, is fairly low outside of close range. This blaster has no hop-up to speak of, just straight ribs in the muzzle to keep the ball exiting straight. As a result, rounds can go left or right, dive early, or travel straight. There isn’t much control over what kind of shot you’ll get, aside from firing even more.
On that note, the rate of fire is decent for a pistol, with two shots per second well within the blaster’s capabilities. Casual testing only resulted in the occasional dry fire from a ball not loading.
War Performance
I was lucky enough for my samples to arrive last Saturday, both a day before I left for my honeymoon AND on the day of a local war. Which gave me a good chance to see Hyper’s potential and shortcomings.
First: despite the stated capacity, the blaster likes to dry fire a lot when fully loaded. Tacky rounds, combined with limited space in a full hopper, leads to no room for proper agitation, even if you’re running around with your blaster. It feels like just because you can hold 40 rounds, doesn’t mean you should, and that’s very disappointing.
The rounds, when they did load, fired and kept their velocity better than Rival rounds. But with the Rush-40, the direction they went was up in the air past close range. Again, lack of hop-up.
The blaster works great in more casual play, especially considering how much it holds in a small package. It would be great for Humans v Zombies type games, assuming you can recover the rounds effectively. But that feeding…it feels like we needed a few more months of work, honestly, even if using it was fun.
Internals
It’s set up very much like a Rival blaster (Kronos, etc) on the inside, with a short barrel for Hyper rounds. What, you were expecting something revolutionary?
Final Thoughts
There’s clearly potential in Hyper, given the capacity and velocity. And the Rush-40 makes the best argument for this, given how much it holds in such a small package. But I feel held back when using it, whether it’s from accuracy issues or feeding problems (both from the occasional dry-fire in regular use to the issue at full capacity). I know Hyper will be here to stay for a while, and of the three blasters to launch, this is the best. But even then, I feel like a few more months of research and development was needed.
This is a trend that will continue for the Hyper line, sadly. But if you do want to dip your toes in the water, this is the blaster to do it with.