Gun Metal Review | Aerial parity
How many times you encountered a game in your childhood and never remember how it was called? To have a vivid memory of something and being unable to recall what it exactly was, to then rediscover it years later?
I had the same feelings for Gun Metal, but the end result wasn't what my young self would have expected.
Aesthetics
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Remember how you were told to never stare at the sun? Because this game doesn't |
The 3d graphics are above average for the time, with a particular care for the skybox and the cloud effects, to the point that they cast a very clear shadow on the ground. Not everything is good though, the developers added an effect to intensify the sun effects when stared directly, which make it an eyesore, literally, it's so bright to hurt the eyes.
The particle details are ok, the bullet effects look nice, and the debris give a sense of chaos and destruction.
Animations are a mixed bag, they are decent for the mech, but haven't received the most care for the ground units.
There is only one voice actor in the game and he does a decent job *GASP*, but his lines during the debriefings have been recorded in one take without any kind of editing *GASP*, to the point you can clearly hear the moments where the actor stops to awkwardly take breath.
I completely ignored the soundtrack for the whole session, it's nothing noteworthy. At the very least, the sounds are passable.
In short, the visuals are ok and the sounds are a mixed bag.
Game Mechanics
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Dogfighting across an enemy barrage becomes the norm pretty soon |
The title is a Mech shooter with dual forms: one being a biped exo suit wielding various weapons and a energy shield, the other being a flying fighter jet. Both have at their disposal 4 weapons plus a missile attack. Apart from the basic gun for both forms, all the weapons have limited ammunition.
At the start of the adventure, you have the basic set of weapons, which will be expanded almost at every end of a mission, granting you an extra gun. There is no reason to go back to the old stuff since the new ones are simply stronger, you can even bring them to previously beaten missions.
The guns themselves are quite varied in their scope and usage, from those that shoot fast dealing small damage, to the slow heavy hitters, to other that are best used against flying enemies and so on.
Flying in the jet form is fun and dangerous, since your shield gets deactivated, making you more vulnerable.
There is also a map that indicated the position of the friendly units, enemies and objectives.
A small note about the cursor, it's not centered to the screen, as such to look to the sides the cursor must be moved all over the screen, which makes reconnaissance slow.
There is no save inside the missions, meaning that if you die during one you have to restart from the beginning.
Most of the levels follow a theme which is used to build around its challenges, like one in which the player must defuse a road full of mines so that the convoy can reach its destination in safety. The levels are also heavily reused, almost the first half are going to be revisited in subsequent missions with different enemies and goals. All levels take place in an open area in which to move freely, sometimes there will be anti-air towers to stimulate a more low profile kind of play.
They are decently designed, but quite short.
There are a lot of troops, ranging from basic infantry, tanks, artillery, bombers, interceptors, gunships, light and heavy carriers.
Apart from infantry, which deals so little damage it's negligible, the others offer a good set of challenges to counter, like the gunships and carriers that can be weakened by attacking certain parts, but aren't at their fullest potential due to the extremely basic AI, which just follows a pre-determined path and shoots around.
There isn't any kind of difficulty selector or additional challenges to spice up the run, not even something like achievements.
I finished the whole game in 3 hours.
Summarizing, while the mechanics are fun, the lacking of a decent AI, bare-bones replayability and short length don't allow them to shine fully.
Narrative
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Pre-mission texts is the only used to contextualize the objectives |
The game is starved for any kind of story elements, even the starting cutscene doesn't say anything about the world or the war. The manual gives a superficial backstory about conflicts, a cut-off colony on planet Helios and a portal that connects to earth, from which an invasion force came to conquer.
It's neither interesting nor well-developed, the game prefers to deliver an enjoyable experience through its mechanics.
Recommendation:
Gun Metal offers an ok time, but just good enough for an afternoon.
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