Nerf Hyper Siege-50 Review

On paper, the Siege-50 should be good. It’s a pump action, slam-fire blaster holding 50 rounds, and shaped for running and gunning. It fires the new Hyper ammo at the advertised velocities. And it’s the only Hyper blaster with a hop-up tab, so rounds should go straight, right?

Well, not everything is a winner. And despite what’s on paper, a lot of times the Siege just doesn’t work as advertised.

But It’s Pretty?

Like the rest of the line, the Hyper Siege-50 looks and feels great. It has the 90s laser tag aesthetic, paint on both sides, a well made pump grip, and more. The rear grip is angled somewhat steep – it makes sense for a hip-fire, slam fire usage, but makes aiming down the blaster slightly awkward. The trigger pull is crisp. Two rails (one on top, one on the hand guard) allow for the attachment of Hyper canisters. Finally, should you experience any sort of mechanical loading issue, there’s a jam door on the side of the blaster.

As per the rest of the line, it ships with less than a full hopper of ammo (40, in this case) and safety glasses.

As mentioned above, the blaster does have a hop-up tab, so it’s intended to be a good primary with range.

The hopper loads via a door on top, which is easy enough to line up with the canister for dumping rounds inside. It does require a bit of shaking when loading quickly, as opposed to one at a time. With the shallow hopper, the rounds tend to sit once they enter the hopper, and you have to shake to make them “flow” into the space.

The pump action is smooth, and I have yet to experience a jammed round in the loading mechanism.

Testing

The Siege-50 averaged 115fps in testing, slightly above the advertised speeds. If you’re quick about it, you can fire off three shots per second with slam-fire as well. Assuming it works. More in a moment.

The hop-up tab, despite being present, doesn’t seem to do much. Rounds still go in whatever direction they want, be it straight, to the side, or dropping into the ground.

But enough static testing. Let’s actually enter the real world.

War Testing

As mentioned above, slam-fire just doesn’t work; it’s far too easy for rounds to bunch up against each other in the hopper, preventing ammo from loading. The result is a lot of dry-fires. Even if you’re just quickly priming the blaster once, there’s a chance you won’t load a round. To deal with that, I ended up just using good old single shots in battle, with slow and methodical priming.

Being a hopper with a shallow angle, pointing the blaster up in any way while loading will also stop a ball from loading. When you’re running around in battle and used to aiming up a bit to get the most distance, this becomes an issue, although habits are fixable. Just…make sure you’ve got the high ground?

Finally, we have the accuracy issues. There were plenty of times with close targets where the ball simply dove or went past them. It’s like the hop-up isn’t there, or doing barely anything. Using a Rival pump action, it’d be much easier to place rounds on target over the same distance, even if they don’t shoot as fast.

Final Opinion

For a blaster that should be a solid primary on paper, the Siege-50 falls short. It doesn’t have the accuracy you need, nor does it have the rate of fire you need to make up for it, thanks to slam-fire that doesn’t always load ammo. You can make it work, sure, especially if you’re in a close quarters, indoor setting. But when other people can hit you from much farther away, this blaster just becomes that much less appealing.