Gain Ground

"Dominate the battlefield!"

Renovation does it again. This pseudo-strategy action game has a lot of depth and playability on every level. Newbs and Gurus alike can pick this game up and start kicking some from the first moment they play.

GRAPHICS - 8
Not the best ever seen on Genesis, but vivid enough to get the point across. The backgrounds are varied and believable, and fit the time frame of the Round you're in. The chibi anime sprites of your onscreen characters are simple, yet pretty damned spiffy.

SOUNDS - 9
The sound effects are crisp and clean, and the music is no slouch, either. I never once got tired of the music, except maybe in round 2. Thankfully, the developers didn't try any digitized voices and used fitting samples for every action in the game. The bleeps and blips are kept to a minimum, and this ties in well with the graphics.

STORY - 1
What the hell is this. There IS no story. The Gain Ground Computer Defense system, which trains soldiers in a peaceful world has gone insane and killed people. 20 of the best soldiers to go through it have been recruited to shut it down and find out what happened. The story has pretty much NOTHING to do with the gameplay, and I think that some of the guys on the dev team just threw this craptacular story together to fill space in the manual.

GAMEPLAY - 10
Well, thankfully, the gameplay suffers NONE from the lack of story, and the premise is simple yet exquisite. Destroy all the enemies. And you're given a nice roster of varied characters to do it with. No complicated plots or character interaction to fuss with, your soldiers are nothing more than 20 different flavors of cannon fodder. There are generally 2 versions of one type of character - like 2 machine gunners, 2 rifle guys, 2 bowmen, and so on. One fires their special attack forward only, whereas the other can fire in all directions. Some special attacks only go forward, and others fly upward to reach enemies that might be on the higher plane of the combat field. The enemies are dumb as dirt, but can be aggressive and kill you quicker than wearing Elk antlers and walking into the closest NRA meeting.

OVERALL - 9
The package comes together to make a beautiful, ambient, varied, thoughtful shooting rampage. Gain Ground is a must play for all genesis owners, and shows that creativity and variety can overshadow graphical power.

Reviewer's Score: 9/10, Originally Posted: 08/19/03