There are games that make you pull your hair out because of the extreme difficulty, like the classic Megaman series on the NES, and then there is GunWorld that will also make you pull your hair, nails, and sometimes even gouge your eyes out because of the extremely high difficulty level, at least for me.
The game has the perfect story (not really!), you have to grow gun plants, and fight off the evil aliens who want to take over earth. Actually, if you give it a second thought, the storyline is as agitating as the glitchy gameplay, but it’s generally okay to give a pass on a naff story so long as the gameplay holds up. Unfortunately, GunWorld doesn’t make up for its lackluster plot with tight gameplay.
However, there is one aspect of the game that actually is quite positive and that’s the old-school graphics the game employs. The developers tried to give it the old 8-bit look of the classic side-scrolling shooters and they definitely succeeded in that department. GunWorld definitely takes you back in time as if you were playing a NES game but since we have paid a huge price for our gaming consoles in today’s world with powerful graphics cards and CPUs, the novelty and nostalgia of the past is starting to wear pretty thin.
The graphics wouldn’t be a problem if the gameplay had been decent but the gameplay will leave you agitated due to numerous glitches and enormous difficulty spikes. You will quickly realize that you can’t shoot enemies that are pacing on a platform higher than you, not unless you’re Chuck Norris and time your shots accurately with your jumps (which is almost impossible). You’re even going to die jumping from one platform to another because for some reason the jumps are buggy, too. These type of glitches may not be actually glitches, instead maybe the developers wanted to make the game even more difficult like Megaman, however, since the 80’s is long gone and most gamers today won’t know what it was like back then, so for some it may be extremely off-putting, but perhaps old-school gamers will appreciate it a little more.
The wall jumping in the game is the only perfect movement that you’ll experience. It’s actually really well done and works a charm with very little annoyance; you can jump from walls to walls and slide like a pro without any difficulty, however, that doesn’t improve the overall gameplay of the game but it’s still something positive. Now only if the developers make the overall game as smooth as the wall jumping feature…
After playing through GunWorld I couldn’t help but think that with a few small changes to the game’s mechanics, GunWorld could have been a really decent shooter. If that happens then the game might become a bit more enjoyable because you won’t be dying every now and then for no reason. It really is annoying when you fall into the dark abyss while making a jump from one platform to another.
There are different worlds that you can explore and it’s totally up to you which world you want to play in because there are no locked levels. Some levels may even make you feel that the game is finally getting better and the movement has improved but that’s not the case at all. The movement is the real culprit in this game. We can enjoy the weird storyline, the gimmicky gameplay, but the control scheme, the jumping, and other movement related stuff is totally frustrating for every gamer. No matter how good you are at side-scrolling action games, you will still suck at this one. Maybe this is the Flappy Bird equivalent of side-scrollers but at least Flappy Bird gave me the ability to time my jumps and responded to my touches.
Summary
If you really want to pull every last strand of hair out of your body then by all means try out this frustratingly difficult game. Maybe you will find it easier but that’s highly unlikely. The game is available for $4.99 on Steam and $1.99 Xbox store. The developer has announced that GunWorld 2 will be coming out soon, so maybe the sequel will take on board some player complaints? Hopefully, because GunWorld has potential.
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