Flame Gunner - Arcade

Who's GAPS inc? Should we care? Yes, yes we should.

Gaps Inc isn't that well known for the games they've made, in truth I've had a hard time working it out in the brief spell of research I've conducted, but what they have produced here is rather impressive.

Each arena holds little tricks and traps to drain your health but you can avoid those.

Flame Gunner is a Third Person shooter, to put it very lightly. Not the over-the-shoulder shooter, but more the Resident Evil type of 3rd person where the camera remains fixed and the character wanders around freely. It's an odd take on the situation and it doesn't quite manage to pull off the attempt in doing so but it's still intriguing to see what they've made as a game.

No, really? I WAS the only one playing!

The gameplay in Flame Gunner involves you picking a character that determines the starting point to the mission. The mission being to one-man-army against a nutcase who wants a rocket to go into space. So that means you get to turn up and Rambo your way through the game, shooting people, blowing stuff up and generally causing havoc. Movement is determined by your joystick pointing you the way with you wish to go and also aims your gun. Shooting is just tapping or holding the fire button, the difference between the two being that holding the fire button locks your aim in that direction while you can still move and dodge shots. Grenades/Explosives can be fired as well but take a little while to launch and there's a dodge button.

Wreck it, blow it and destroy it for bonus points!

Enemies in Flame Gunner will aim towards you it'll be OBVIOUS that they are, you're safe until the line of fire turns read and then you'll have to be out of the way. Each enemy has a health bar and as you progress, the odd levelling system in the game will determine enemies to get harder as you go and more numerous in later missions. Levels don't have to be played in order and you can choose (usually) which levels you wish to take next with some having more difficult missions than others.

Mission tasks differ from location to location.

Usually, your objective in Flame Gunner is just to kill everyone and maybe a boss. Other types of mission include destruction, where you blow everything up; escort, where you have to get someone free of an area as quickly as possible without them being killed; and protection, where you stop the enemies from destroying something within a time limit. Unfortunately, it's not always clear which mission will hold which tasks for you to be done until you start playing it. But the variety does keep the game more interesting.

Lots of FMVs and action happening, plot points included.

Interestingly, some arenas are large enough that if you move to a specific point/location, the camera will change a la FMV and you get to see the fight from a new perspective, likewise some levels will have you moving through stages with the FMV showing the progression ebfore it settles at a point and game can be played from there in almost seemless movement between the FMV and the static image showing the game's level.

Huge wall of fire, a.k.a A Big Gun.

As a game, despite the guns and explosives and fighting Armoured Personel Carriers and tough guys, Flame Gunner is almost calm in its delivery of the game. This may be as a result of the slow movement of the main characters, Generic Asshat, Girly Asshat and OneMoreChoice Asshat. Little seems to be different between the characters which leaves the game to fall back upon its multiple choice system and routes for players to navigate their way around and through the levels.

Sounds like my living room after 2 curries.

What Flame Gunner doesn't hold up on, is the control system. Moving and trying to aim becomes a nightmare if you don't develop these skills quickly and you'll soon be overwhelmed by the enemies attacking you. Dodging rarely seems to work and using the explosives is risable at best for the attempt you'll make. Thankfully you can pick up bonus health, new guns and more explosives but it doesn't stop the game being difficult more so as a result of bad gameplay mechanics than any real challenge to the player.

Some fights are very drawn out.

The sounds are your typical gunshots and explosions, while the music is comfortably mild in the background, never overwhelming but also conventional enough that it doesn't grate and it doesn't stand out as being out of place in the game. It could very easily be in place in almost any game from the 90s to today by the grace of its own merits and dulcet tones.

They don't make it easy on the final stages. Not at all.

Overall, Flame Gunner is worth a look and those in the know will recognise the engine and the models used in the way they've been executed, it's a good game but lacks that final spit and polish that would turn it into a great game. The potential is there and while not entirely a 'miss' more a glancing ricochet away from the bullseye of a great game.

Super Probotector/Contra 3: The Alien Wars

And so it begins, on the SNES!

I do have a rather fond relationship with the Probotector/Contra series of games, to a point. That point being this game in particular in which having played the first and second game in the series, then getting a SNES and seeing "Super Probotector" (an odd thing to name all games "super" just because it's on the Super Nintendo, causes a problem when you already called it Super on the NES... Right? SUPER Mario brothers...) and seeing the 8bit classic, favourite and challenge of a console brought to the 16bit era and sitting back and going "....wow..." having spent the first few minutes of the game running through a war-torn city, jumping into a tank, taking out barricades, tanks, being hit with an airstrike, somersaulting over fireballs and eruptions before fighting a giant mutant tortoise. FOR THE FIRST LEVEL.

The dynamic ways in which you'll have to fight enemies, are numerous.

It runs the same format as the other games before it have. You've yourself and maybe a second player, running from left to right with your guns, killing everything that moves and trying to get to the end where you can kill a boss. (usually... this game does mix it up a little). Accompanying this is your new abilities to climb walls, hang from ceilings and supports and now have the ability to select different weapons or fire both at once in a "web of death" spiralling move. You can also carry bombs that wipe out most enemies and do some damage to bosses too.

Because being stalked into the stratosphere wasn't scary enough, bring the spiked walls.

First thing you'll notice is that the graphics are stunning. There's no two ways about that one and the detail and focus on the 16-bit version here is mind-blowing, especially if you've not seen the games after this point. Destroyed cities look like truly dilapidated remnants of once former glorious locations, industrial landscapes as far as the eye can see, deserts within acres of canyons while riding a hover bike through along a fully maintained single road... Ok lost the plot a little on that one. But every single enemy, from standard alien creature up to giant flying armada space boss, looks stunning. The detail has been lavished on in every regard.

"I felt like such a twat when I turned around and saw what really scared them away..."

The gameplay hasn't suffered either. It's fast, it's fluid, your character runs and jumps as smoothly as the best of them and the added collar/shoulder buttons help with the standing still and shooting in all directions function while the jump and shoot are nicely placed as per muscle memory would accept while the switch and bomb buttons are added on and tend to be less used than the others anyway. (Unless you've an auto fire joypad, then it's double gun time!... yes I did do that back in the early 90's). If you die in this game it's for one of two reasons, either you've faced off against an enemy you've never met before or you didn't react in time. The controls are too solid for that to be the error here.

Once again, the computer can do something more cool than I can.

Musically and sound-effects wise, the game is fairly crisp, making good use of the onboard sound capabilities of the Super Nintendo, giving us heart-pounding beats and music filled with adrenaline to the point it'll be dripping from your ears while the shouts, screams, explosions and gunfire is almost constant but never quite enough to overpower the musical ensemble. Though some of the compositions rely on bridges that are dependent upon the character reaching a certain point in the level and it's not quite so smooth in such a transition.

Post-Air-Strike stance.

The multiplayer still holds the same issues that the first games did. If one person tries to make a huge jump that's beyond what you can manage if the screen doesn't scroll, and the other player doesn't jump... Then it's a quick trip to fuck-you town, population YOU.

First boss, suffering from Ectopia cordis (go look it up)

The game will overwhelm you at first, there's just SO much going on in each level, even the top-down levels where your view changes to a birds-eye-view of the battle, the shoulder buttons used to turn left and right and the d-pad to run around, jumping now makes you duck under bullets and some of the weapons take on different properties, the laser in particular is now a short range constant stream rather than the high powered beam weapon it was in the previous level.

Mode 7 used wonderfully here to show level 2. Though you really need to see it in action.

Your power ups range from the mundane but useful machinegun (of which you have anyway), crush gun that's short range but explodes powerfully, the flamethrower that acts like an actual flame thrower, homing bullets that do exactly what you'd expect; builds a house. No. The spread/scatter gun making it's almost trademark appearance and the laser. Bombs that will stop most bullets and small enemies and will also damage larger ones and the occasional Barrier that will give you a colour-coded shield that lets you know when it'll run out.

Level 1 and I get a tank, sadly not much else later on.

Throw in 3 difficulties of varying toughness, including the Hard Mode being the ONLY way to get the True Final Boss (a brain in an armoured suit that chases you up a pit while you're helicoptering out). Some obstacles also become invincible, some bosses speed up or hit in different movements, some enemies will now attack rather than sit in the background. There's a BIG jump from Normal to Hard mode that you will not see from Easy to Normal. In fact, with the Easy mode, you'll wonder why you even bothered, especially when most bosses are rather idle during the fights, the last boss has the 4 easiest options when fighting and you can likely outrun bullets. While conversely for hard mode, you'll be shot faster than you can say "what bulle...?", the last boss hammers you with every option and tends to favour even the grey snake special (you'll dread it when you see it) and then suits up for a final fight afterwards, and the giant turtle on level is invincible save for the heart (you can't break other bits of it).

The video game equivilient of "I'm a huge TIT", with guns.

It's a good example of how to do a strong, solid, run-n-gunner. Learn from it.