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PSM Quick Play: Gun Commando

Posted by Nick K on January 23rd, 2013 | 8 Comments | Tags: Gun Commando

‘PSM Quick Play‘ are impressions from newly released PlayStation Mobile titles and are based on roughly 45 minutes or more of playtime. Full reviews may be available at a later date.

Gun Commando

$2.79 / £2.19 – Tested on PlayStation Vita (Game was purchased)

I had extremely high expectations going into Gun Commando. This is the first PlayStation Mobile game I didn’t think twice about buying. My expectations were exceeded within the first 10 minutes of play. The further through the game I got, the better the game got. I ended up playing well into my first hour and still chugging along through the levels.

Gun Commando is the first PSM 1st-person shooter ever released. It features the look and basic gameplay of Wolfenstein 3D or DOOM, but much smoother. Controls are tight while using either the touch screen or the physical buttons and sticks. I prefer the sticks and L/R for the true FPS gameplay and Gun Commando delivers. Visually, the graphics are extremely sharp on the Vita. You’ll see a lot of buses that look like rectangular cereal boxes and relatively generic corridors, but that is what this game should look like.

The basic premise of the game is that you are Jack Bennett, a down and out badass who is tasked by “the agency” to take on an alien threat. You control Jack from the 1st-person view and run down the aliens above ground, below ground, and into an office building. After several levels of an ever increasing number of bad guys, you’ll meet the level boss. In one case, its three bosses. They are simple battles that require no less than pummeling the big baddie with bulbous bullets while rotating around them or running backwards.

Enemies you’ll encounter start off as close range grunts. Before you reach the first boss you will have been shot by gun toting enemies. Later levels, of which there are plenty, have you up against little green aliens that can only be shot when they jump, unmask green alien men spraying machine gun fire, and un-manned gun turrets add to the bullet hell. Its in these later levels where you’ll experience much larger maze-like levels very reminiscent to Wolfenstein 3D. There is no interact button, so when you come up on a door, it will just open on its own – and sometimes shut tight behind you.

Dialogue throughout the game is fairly witty, but its the comic book styled art that is really cool. The weapons in Gun Commando are never picked up and enemies don’t drop them yet there is plenty of variety. Your gun just seems to upgrade when you take down loads of enemies. There is a meter in the HUD that tracks hits and misses, which will reward you with a better weapon for consecutive hits and devalue it for misses. Music is a metal soundtrack that repeats but remains pretty entertaining throughout.

Gun Commando is the first PSM game I have played for hours on end and wholeheartedly plan to play over and over again. The only bad thing I can come up with is the fact that I had to tone the control sensitivity down a notch because the turn would float past the point of no additional input. This made it difficult to pinpoint shots on hunkered down enemies when the sensitivity was up. That being said, I highly recommend you give it a try if you are even remotely a fan of the classic styled 1st-person shooters that didn’t allow you to look up or down.

Hot:

• Clean comic book style cutscenes
• Tight controls
• Use touch screen or analog stick and shoulder button controls
• Sharp graphics and colorful environments
• Retro 1st person shooter gameplay
• Ripping music soundtrack loops but never really gets old
• Increasing challenge
• Retro level design
• Varied enemy types mixes up gameplay
• Innovative weapon upgrade system

Not:

• Had to tone down the control sensitivity a little

 

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