Tri
to beat this.
Back
in Nerf land once again, checking out yet another of their latest
blasters. This time we've been playing with... ahem... seriously
testing something from the Modulus range; a group of blasters
designed to be modified, changed, and combined to your heart's
desire. It's called the Tri-Strike, so let's lock and load!
In
a nutshell, the Tri-Strike is so called because it is essentially
three blasters in one... kinda. It is a spring-firing blaster, which
means, unlike our previous reviews of the Hyperfire and MEGA Mastodon, there are no need for batteries here. Having said that,
just one of the three blasters in the kit uses a spring; the other
two are air-powered – something we've personally not seen from Nerf
since the 1990s. Remember that Nerf Bow? Ahh, memories...
So,
the base blaster is a chunky pistol that shoots one dart at a time,
drawn from the included ten-dart clip. You slap in the clip from the
underside, draw back the orange primer (with a knob on each side –
tee hee), push it back, and shoot. As a standalone pistol it is
pretty good, despite being fairly large. The sights are good, it
shoots relatively straight, and is capable of 'slam firing', whereby
you hold down the trigger and pump the primer to shoot all ten darts
quickly.
Clipping
onto the nose of the pistol is a barrel extension with a very wide
grip to make the Tri-Strike a two-hander. But that isn't all, as
contained in that forward section are four MEGA darts which can be
shot off by firmly pumping the big grip. The darts load down the
barrel, so there isn't a clip or magazine for this section of the
blaster, but it does feature a very clever mechanism whereby it
'knows' which barrels contain a dart, so even with only one dart
loaded, it will always shoot first time round.
The
reason we said “...kinda” earlier is because, although the
forward section can indeed shoot those four darts when not attached
to the pistol, its a bit ungainly and awkward to do so. What isn't
awkward is firing the rocket launcher. Included along with one of the
large rocket darts, previously seen with the Demolisher a couple of
years back, the two sections of the rocket launcher can be conjoined
to create a stand-alone single shot blaster that shoots with a
plunger-like stock. It is a blaster in it's own right, and the rocket
section even has a tactical rail to attach accessories like a sight
or another kind of smaller blaster.
Detach
the stock from the rocket launcher, and then bolt it to the back of
the pistol, with the launcher sliding onto the top side rail; now you
have your complete Tri-Strike. Combined, it's a pretty big thing, and
despite being made up of removable sections it is nicely robust. All
three blasters can be fired really easily and in the hand it feels
like a very aggressive and intimidating thing.
In
firing? Well we were pleased to see the main pistol performed very
well, with decent ranges of between 50 and 60 feet. The rocket
launcher shoots as far as you can manage, as the plunger needs a fair
amount of wallop to break 20 feet or so. We've never reviewed these
large rocket darts before, but can only assume they are intended for
closer range combat as a result. Meanwhile, the forward MEGA dart
shooter was something of a disappointment. When pumping the grip the
first two fire off with impressive power, reaching distances of
around 30-35 feet, but the last two always fell far shorter. It might
have been that the one Hasbro sent us was slightly defective, with
perhaps some kind of air leak in the smart mechanism, but we found
ourselves intentionally removing that section when in battle.
And
hey, with just the rocket launcher attached to the pistol, the Nerf
Tri-Strike looks pretty badness and performs well, and we love the
white and orange colourings of both blaster and darts. In play, we
swapped out the ten dart clip for the 24 dart drum that came with the
Hyperfire (which means slam firing is a lot more fun), while we also
stuck on the barrel extension and fore grip of the Retaliator.
Tactical as F!
From
what we can tell, the Tri-Strike is what the Nerf Modulus range
should be all about – complete blasters with removable parts to
interchange with others, not necessarily from the Modulus range. As
springers go it is powerful, easy to operate, and looks 'da
bizzness'.
£42.99
Visit
nerf.hasbro.com
