Gunbird 2

"Masochism"

I wrote this absurdly excessive and embarrassingly verbose review for Gunbird 2 a couple days back, then trashed it. It was flat and desperate; I threw personality right out the window, and started rambling like a goddamn thesaurus. Or trying to, anyway; I'm not exactly what you'd call a great wordsmith, so it was a forced and beyond painful piece of trash. There was this one lovely line, though, that I had to keep, as it was so out of place for my first review, but a perfect presentation for my revitalized effort:

Gunbird 2 will unload all over your face.

Super fruity with extra sprinkles on top (bullets turn into candy!), Psikyo's little demon shooter turned out to be a fist to my unassuming face, a very harsh personal introduction to today's sadistic 'manic shmups.' I had flirted around with shooters during the 16-bit era, sure - I'd champion M.U.S.H.A. and R-Type III whenever the genre was brought up, but I had never experienced anything as refined and so goddamn brutal as this zany vertical blaster. Its asinine aesthetics and gratingly bouncy soundtrack mask razor-sharp gameplay and relentless difficulty, and though overbearing for my then-weak sauce skills, it was enough to take my casual enjoyment of the genre and turn it into an obsessive love.

It starts off deviantly enough, bright and happy with a selection of seven quirky anime-type characters, everything from a commie robot to a gay samurai to a couple of eye-rollingly blatant Symphony of the Night and Twinkle Star Sprites knock-offs, all of whom are after a wish-granting potion. But these characters, though all fairly well balanced and effective in their own right, are no Morrigan Aensland, Darkstalkers' saucy succubus who uses ghouls as bullets and bees for her bomb. Yeah. I've no idea why Psikyo saw fit to include her, but I'm not one to argue with video game logic or a woman's enormous rack.

So, yes, the characters are pathetic (mostly, anyway), and at first the mechanics don't seem much more inspired: each character you pilot has their own specific set of attacks, including a basic shot which can be strengthened three times over by nabbing power-ups, a melee (close-range) attack that can be built up to devastating effect by killing enemies and, of course, a screen-clearing bomb. (Melee strike aside, this is actually Psikyo's set-up for most of their shooters.) It's all fairly simple, admittedly - at least it seems that way up until you try and put them to use. Right out the gate, Gunbird 2 goes straight for the jugular.

There are no empty warm-up levels and there is no hand-holding to be found. Bullets come jetting out of turrets and the barrels of giant mechs at alarming speed. Bee-lining across the screen for a coin (which will garner massive points if collected when they shine) or a bomb icon to help your panicky ass can prove fatal if you aren't quick enough, as it doesn't take long for the enemy to pin you down to a section of the screen with a wall of bullets. The bosses, three asinine pirates also searching for that potion, are every bit as vicious as the stages that lead up to them, sometimes even more so. Commanding airships and tanks and the like, they spew wave after wave of brightly-colored bullets your way, only stopping once (if) defeated.

The stages, made up of mundane towns and fields, are short, but their brevity is actually a blessing. Had these levels been any longer, the game would've just been too difficult. And, you see, although the enemy will constantly hit you with more force than a shotgun blast to your face, Gunbird 2 is never actually cheap.

You don't have a large hitbox, your character isn't unfairly underpowered and you won't move at a tenth of the speed of the bullets coming your way. Make no mistake: the opposition, almost always bathing your screen with a sea of bullets, will bulldoze you down, but eventually overcoming it isn't out of the question. Unlike Giga Wing or some such crap, the swarms of bullets aren't just randomly splashed onto the screen, their patterns are cleverly crafted, allowing you to quickly work out strategies and maneuver through their very, very tight cracks.

It's just unfortunate the game - Morrigan art gallery aside - looks appalling, so uninspired and old. While it's always great to see a shmup without spacecrafts and stars for a change, something with actual effort put into it rocks, too. (Or even backdrops that are consistent with the saccharine theme, for Christ's sake.) Crappy Japanese villages, caves and a desert, replete with asshats waving at you, simply do not cut it. There's just little variety, not enough color and only one single scrolling screen. Augh. I'm thankful for the lack of slowdown, at least.

Scratch that - I'm thankful for quite a bit. Those old Irem and Konami blasters I once admired presented a good challenge, but Gunbird 2 cracked my skull wide open with a crowbar - and there's just no going back for me now. No matter how many times I've been whipped - an obscene number, I assure you - I'd get up off the ground and go right back at it for another brutalizing. I've since improved considerably, and while I still have yet to one-credit Gunbird 2, my dedication to it is as strong as ever, even four years after its release.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 05/25/04