Gungage

The Good
Control: Gungage is one of the games with the most intuitive and effective control I've ever played. Up and down to move character forward and backward, left and right to turn, and left and right trigger for a strafe / side step movement that is extremely useful as it allows the character to move and always facing the enemies. Aiming is easy, the character would normally shoot in a horizontal line level with his shoulder, but when the enemies are in a certain angle above or below that horizontal line, he/she automatically "Lock on" to the target and can keep firing. There is also a button for manual aiming, if your character cannot lock on to the enemy (however I rarely used this one).

Replay value: very good. Four characters with different speed, health, firepower and special abilities. Kard Berdysh is heavily built, with a BFG that shoots 4 types of ammo and 2 offensive special attacks, but moves and fires rather slow. Steyr Harquebus has 3 so-so special attacks and weakest damage-per-shot main attack, but is fastest and has highest rate of fire. Dee Van Feng is rather fragile, but fast and has good firepower. Wakle Skade, whom the player starts the game with, is sadly mediocre.

The levels unfold differently for each character, some can step into areas that other could not. Also, they are not unlocked when you beat the game, but when your character performed a certain action, or reach a secret area. This encourages players to discover the levels, instead of just rush in gun blazing and be done with it.

Difficulty: Moderate. The bosses has their patterns which can be quickly figured out, but take time (thankfully, not too long) to adapt to. The game also did a nice job introducing the bosses, some of them had quite a menacing appearance, and the confrontation makes the player feel danger and excitement. As a result, they are quite satisfying to beat. I remember a bunch of kids watched me play the subway level with Wakle and we all cheered when we see the boss growls in pain as it dies.

The Bad
The process of unlocking the characters can sometimes be frustrating, as the player is not given even a slightest hint about what to do. However the only hard part is knowing what to do; once you know, it is easy to get all four characters in less than an hour.

The unlockable characters are nice, but unfortunately that emphasizes how mediocre the original character, Wakle, is. He has moderately good speed, his weapon has a moderately fast rate of fire and is moderately powerful. However, he has only one type of ammo, and his special abilities aren't even attacks, one is a sort of force field, and another is a "Freeze" ability that only works on a SINGLE enemy for a few seconds, and most of the time it doesn't even work on stronger enemies. Needless to say, I never again played with Wakle after I have unlocked other characters, the only exception being when I lost my save file.

The level mix-and-mash is a nice feature that breaks the tedium of playing the same game with a new character. However, to achieve this, the game sacrifices the coherence in the story (OK to be honest, I didn't play this game for the story, so you can forget I ever said 'story') and scenery (now this is pretty important in my book) . In many other games you have a sense of progression, there are usually some sort of transitions between levels, and most of the time you know when you are near the final level. Gungage, on the other hand, is especially sloppy with level design and virtually no transition. Each level as its own theme and has totally no connection to the previous one (Think Contra, but in 3D). Especially jarring is a level when the main character is put in the middle of a desert, leaving us to wonder how the heck he/ she got there and how to escape. You kill every moving things, see the 'Stage Complete' announcement, watch your score grow, and move on.

The Bottom Line
Gungage has its flaws, but is nonetheless an exciting action game that rewards player nicely for their effort.