While in the early days the Switch didn’t have loads of shoot-em-ups, in the years since not only has the eShop caught up, it’s now overflowing with solid shooters of just about every kind. Whether you’re into arcade-style classics, challenging titles with some roguelike flavor, or even just something very different, there’s more than a little bit of everything out there. That brings us to Flightpath: Adventures in Venaris, which does manage to do something a bit differently that sets itself apart, but perhaps not in the way you’d expect given the genre.

What Flightpath does that I can’t say I’ve seen attempted by anyone else to date, is to try to tell a story on top of all of the flying around and shooting everything in sight. You’ll be able to choose from one of 3 characters, with each of them having their own story to tell, and even branching paths for decisions to add yet another layer of depth to them. With story beats interspersed with the shooting action, I’ll admit that the idea was at least an intriguing one, but I also can’t say it necessarily works in a convincing way to make the game more fun and engaging.

One problem is that when I play games in some genres, particularly ones with arcade origins, I can’t say a good story is even on my radar… I’m just there for the chaos and destruction. With that in mind, you could actually make a case that stopping the action to play out these small story interludes harms the experience more than it helps them. If I’m in the zone and ready for more, the last thing I want is for the game to snuff out my momentum. Also, while I do appreciate the upgrade system and the truly terrifying builds you can get going if you have some patience, the game seems to struggle to keep up. In particular it felt like I became powerful to the point where bosses just started being bullet sponges to simply be endured, making for quite a bit of dull dodging and waiting a few minutes to wear them down.

Put that all together and you’ve got a decent shooter to a degree, but it’s hard to make a case that it’s a great one. Yes, the storylines, branching paths, and unpredictability are all novel, but in the end the shooting doesn’t really hold up that well. Worse, there are simply so many great shooters already out there in the eShop that this feels pretty weak by comparison. If you’re simply out for something very different, this will deliver that to a degree, but otherwise you’re really better off with any number of other options.