This here game's about old-time shootouts, and it's a hoot. Your protagonist (who I assume is the Man with No Name from those Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns) is tasked with shooting his way through a mess of enemies, and it ain't easy. They outnumber you, have spiffy AI, and are deadly shots to boot. Thankfully your cowboy has learned to tap into the Matrix and use bullet time, so that evens the odds a bit. Expect some exhilarating gunfights. Add in delightfully chunky graphics and some twangy MIDI guitar and you've got a game that has the cowboy-punk charm of the Meat Puppets. Yeehaw?
WASD moves and you aim with the mouse, and you can either activate bullet-time by itself or use it while leaping in the air. I'll admit there is a learning curve to this; if you attempt to run-and-gun you'll get shot down pretty quickly. In order to survive you'll have to have patience, use cover, and circle-strafe when in sight of the enemy. Judicious use of bullet-time is mandatory too. Once you get the controls down, though, you're in for a treat, as everything is finely tuned and quite tense. I haven't played a shooter this gratifying or thrilling since co-op L4D on Expert. When you slo-mo leap in the air and blast two enemies that previously killed you a dozen times you'll feel like a badass. And it'll be cool.
Go on now. Get to shootin' some varmints already. Ya hear?
This was a really great
This was a really great experience. Incredibly challenging, tight and well designed mechanics, great midi music, nice graphic style. I felt a surprising amount of immersion while playing. I totally felt like badass cowboy having intense shootouts with these deadly bandits. I'm also fond of the juxtaposition of a bullet time mechanic and graphics somewhere between Atari and NES. The old and the new(ish) in a very well thought out package.
Wow, it sort of took the
Wow, it sort of took the bullet time of max pain and made a game that's about that bullet time, instead of a game that happens to have bullet time in it!
It really shows how graphics obscure the most important part of gameplay (and here I'm talking gameplay as in gamist play to win gameplay)
I Know GunFu
It's funny that the design choices that go against commercial sensibilities make it a better game. Instead of holding your hand and giving you multiple save points, it makes death a more final thing. When playing Hard mode I had the same looming dread of death that I had when playing Spelunky or this cool Roguelike I just found. If a random level generator makes it into the 1.0 release (I'll update the link when its out) I'll have died and gone to redneck heaven. I do declare.
Hmmm, after playing it
Hmmm, after playing it through (managed to beat it on regular), I'm not quite as starry eyed now.
For example, while I get the looming sense of death your talking about, it just ends up being repeating the same clicks and waiting on bullet time cooldown, over and over, if you die. That's not looming death, it's repetitive busy work. I think there must be some way to keep the looming death, while removing the repetitive busy work.
Second, the bullet time dodges kind of lost their movie mystique - rather than being a dramatic finishing move, they just become a means to an end, like another mario jump. It kind of rubbed away the mystique of the dodge shoot for me.
Also the shot gunners seem to be too random - which increases the first issue alot (random is okay if you don't have to repeat a series of the same keystrokes every time you randomly fail).
Random levels would be cool if it makes a text code for the level you can pass on to other people. Random levels that you think are really hard and you beat - but you can never show that level to anyone else ever cause it was random?
I'm saying that because the levels are more like puzzles with a fairly set solution, rather than twitch fests.
See, the cool part is that
See, the cool part is that this is only the .90 release. The 1.0 (I'll update the links and indicate the change in the review when it happens) will have some cool changes. I talked to the developer and he said that a level editor and updated AI are the major additions; he's planning for the AI to take cover and not have instantaneous-turning to give it more of a strategic edge. Think low-fi Gears of War meets Neo.
Hmm, that almost seems like
Hmm, that almost seems like a new game. Which isn't so good if the old one ceases to be accessable anymore (something that mmorpg patching has started to make a tradition)
That release happened yet?
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