"Someone shoot this game with a tranquilizer...."

First Person Shooters are a mainstay in any arcade across America, or even across the world. In light of all of the House of the Dead's, the Area 51's and the Time Crisis series, comes another FPS that seems to have been infused with a high-speed chip and then put out for people to play. Set in the future, you take control of one of two cops that have access to some pretty wild machinary that allows them to scream across the sky and blow up anything from small robot soldiers to giant sky-planes.

-Visuals 9/10-

Exceptionally detailed, and well lighted, if you can catch a glimpse of what there is to offer. In between the explosions, the amount of things flying at you, away from you, above you or below you, you'll hardly have time to notice just where you're at, or what you're doing. This also allows the fact that some of the image break-up in the game is hidden behind massive explosions that literally fill up the screen.

Locations for battle are well thought out, taking you from Las Vegas, to the island of Alcatraz. Enemy detail comes in the form of several different robots, each with their own style of attacking, or reacting to your attacks. Bosses are huge and unique, and even the way that environment changes when you start firing on everything around you shows through brilliantly.

-Audio 8/10-

I really couldn't tell you what the music is like, because the only thing that you hear, is the sound of objects exploding from constant gunfire. Robots, rockets, boss alerts...they all ring out through the speakers. So if you're prone to headaches, you may want to stay away from this game until you can find earplugs to wear.

-Control 9/10-

Nothing finer than standing up on a platform with an oversized machine gun in your hand. The game guns are huge, but lightweight, and there is enough distance between you and the second player to where you can swing the gun towards the opposite side of the screen and nail something. One of the biggest down falls is that the accuracy is sometimes off. In this particular case, the gun barrel is close enough to the screen, that there is no worry about it, and there is a small targeting crosshair that appears allowing you to target everything simply.

-Game Play 9/10-

High flying and high speed, LA Machine Guns sends you on a fast paced ride through 4 different stages in a kill-fest that takes you through the heart of LA, to the desert strip of Las Vegas, and then to the island of Alcatraz and into a mine shaft only to end up in a final battle over the sea. Where the game takes an interesting turn, is with the combinations.

Combinations come through consecutive firing and destruction of on-screen targets. The higher your kill count without missing a beat, the better your ranking will be in the end. The real point is to gain an astronomical score by the end of the game, and in order to do that, you have to make sure that you're always destroying something and not killing off the civilians.

-Overall 9/10-

A very fast paced game, with plenty to blow up and shoot at. While you may find yourself dumping quarters into the game, you may also find yourself walking away without spending more than the initial credtis you put in to start it out. With a killer visual display, an excellent control type and cabinet set up, you'll find the experience enjoyable enough to keep returning to it. Although there may seem to be no substance to the game, the accomplishment of getting a top score is well worth the cash, as the lowest score I've seen is 50,000,000.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 09/02/01, Updated 09/02/01