It is the year 2039 and Dr Thad
Oblong's Anywhere Engine
has squashed the universe to
the size of a laugh and the
width of a blink. Long since freed from the
drudgery of everyday toil, humanity is
enjoying the leisure aspects of Anywhere
travel; lunch breaks in different galaxies,
cheap interstellar holidays and queue
jumping in pan-dimensional restaurants.
Stress has passed into medical history and
everything in the garden is rosy.
However, the invention of the Anywhere Engine has
brought its own problems. Humanity is not alone in the
universe and regrettably the many and varied citizens
of creation have not taken kindly to having their resorts
overcrowded and their restaurant tables double-booked. Following the terrible Service Charge Wars of
2026, the races of the universe have lived in uneasy
peace, although there are still remote worlds where
wise men dare not walk alone. Dramatically, yet
somehow predictably, it is on of these worlds that the tourist
cruiser
SS Tourist Cruiser has crashed. Her injured
captain tried gallantly to lead the passengers to safety
but was unable to prevent a number of them from
wandering off to photograph the local flesh-tearing
monstrosities. Dutifully, but with marked reluctance, the
good captain has been obliged to call in professional
help - namely the hardest member of Space HQ's
Berserker Division.
This is where you come in. In
Space Gun, you
are
Lieutenant-Colonel Susan Paperclip.
BLIM!
By far the most sensible explanation of mankind's apparent solitude in the universe is provided by Watterson's Theorem. This holds that "probably the surest sign of intelligent life in space is that none of it has tried to contact us." |
Boilk!
So runs the plot to Ocean's brand new
arcade conversion. Luckily you can skip the
lot without fear of missing anything vital -
essentially,
Space Gun is
Op Wolf 3. There's
one important difference. Pretend you hadn't
noticed them before and gawp at those
screenshots. Yup. This game has COLOUR.
The huge variety of aliens scuttle, flutter and
waddle towards you in blazing shades of
every colour possible. Coupled with the
Speccy-straining speed at which everything
moves, the overall result is pretty stunning to
say the least. Probably the best comparison
would be if you imagined
Smash TV, but
bigger, in 3D and more disturbing. Tickle my
chin with an egg whisk and call me Mr
Squeamish, but I'm a bit unsettled by a
game that has you shooting the various limbs
off aliens before blasting their heads apart in
gruesome polychromatic explosions. It really is
incredibly violent, and more than a bit yukky.
Still, I can't condemn a game just because
I'm a scaredy cat. Playing
Space Gun is a lot of
fun - the action is furious and unrelenting and
beasties spring out
from every
angle as you
progress through
both horizontally- and
TOP FIVE SCARIEST ALIENS
* The alien in The Thing
* The thing in Alien
*The surprised-looking bald guy from that episode of Star Trek
* The aliens in Aliens
* Richard O'Brien |
3D-scrolling sections.
There are power-ups
for additional energy
and nastier weapons,
and occasionally
you'll find a lost
tourist who needs a
bit of covering fire as
he stumbles aimlessly across the
screen. On the presentation side, there are loads of
neat touches such as the motion scanner, the little
"Ouch!" balloons which appear when you're hit, and the
way you can (ugh) shoot off the claws of the bigger
aliens to stop them attacking you. In short, it's a slick
piece of programming, chock-full of action, with tough
and exciting gameplay.
Despite this, there's a major problem. To go back to
the comparisons with
Smash TV, no matter how frenetic that game became, you could always follow what
was going on, Here, once more than two aliens are on
screen, it's practically impossible to keep track of your
blue gunsight. Instead of which-beastie-should-I-hit-first
strategies, you're reduced to blasting away at random
in the hope of hitting something. It's a massive flaw,
and one which affects the final rating enormously.
Which is a shame, because
Space Gun is a real attack
on the senses. Basically, it looks fabulous, it sounds
fabulous and it's jolly good fun in the short term.
Unfortunately, any
lasting appeal has
been effectively
ruined by the fact
that you can't work
out what the
heck's going on.
| Arcade version screenshot... |
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| Click here to view all 1 pics |
| Ratings given by other magazines |
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| Info supplied by the SPOT*ON database |
