"Not perfect but it's still a swell game"

Gunblade NY has been AM3's answer to Yu Suzuki's acclaimed Virtua Cop. While Gunblade features androids causing trouble at a big city, LA Machine Guns takes that to the next level with Model 3 Type 2 with a so-so story and only one storyline to follow.

The gameplay is reminicient of Gunblade NY's, but the terrorists are now easier to defeat, thanks to the 60FPS capacity. The terrorists will escape if you have to tag them along, and at times you have to slam on them repeatedly until he goes down. Unfortunately, many terrorists will try to come out at you and the cam only targets one terrorist at a time, causing big frustration at times. Sometimes there are far away targets and it's hard to get a good shot because each shot is not channeled at the same spot your mouse was pointed at. Also, the crosshairs are not visible on the game, making clean shots difficult.

The graphics and the animation are a real improvement over Gunblade NY's. Like I said before, the 60FPS is a welcome feature, with only minimal slowdown. Unfortunately, the innocent bystanders would use a little work as there are far too many polygons on them. Otherwise the polygons are smoothened up in almost all cases, such as fighter helicopters, fat androids, and such.

You won't be satisfied to find out that LA Machine Guns only have one storyline to follow, but you can select from one of the first four stages from the beginning of the game, depending on how good you are on this game. I'd just wished that there would be two storylines instead of 1. However, the mission on Stage 1 is overused, as some new concepts must be used in order to give this game some originality. AM3 doesn't score high on originality on this one, though.

To conclude, you really don't have to play this game unless you want some fun at your arcade, and unless you are at GameWorks and other high-end arcades. The enemy lock-in confusion is for the hardcore strafer, but if you are into more of the steady firing, then stick to either Yu Suzuki's Virtua Cop series, Namco's Time Crisis, or Konami's Silent Scope.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 11/01/99, Updated 04/07/02