GunForce

"Is this supposed to be a video game?"

Sweet Jesus! I hadn't played such a bad game in a long time! I'm sorry to begin by lambasting this game from my first line, but you have to give the Caesar what belongs to the Caesar.

GunForce is a side-scrolling shooting game, very much in the style of the super-classic Contra series. Nothing new here: just run from left to right, collect weapons and power-ups, shoot everything that moves, ride the occasional vehicle, and fight a huge boss at the end of each level. Rinse. Repeat. We have seen this countless times before. The problem is that we have seen others do it WAY better than GunForce. Let's see: Gunstar Heroes, the Metal Slug series, Doom Troopers... hell, even Rush N' Attack for the NES!

Gun Force places you in the shoes of a mean-looking soldier; a one-man army who sets out to take on an evil, conventional, many-men-and-vehicle army. This shallow premise should guarantee, at least, a short time of mindless fun. You know, exactly what you'd expect from Schwarzenegger action movies. Instead, GunForce leaves you the impression that you are watching an awful action flick on Cinemax. You just don't enjoy it. You wanted Commando, but you got American Ninja. Yikes.

Anyway, I'll elaborate on the game. Graphically speaking, GunForce is not bad. At least the backgrounds are colorful enough to make the game look good. But that's all!

That about does it for the good things this turd of a game has to offer.

Your character, although big and mean-looking, moves so chunkily that you feel like you are controlling a AA-battery-operated toy robot. It moves stiffly and in an awkward way. You can immediately tell that the programmers used only two frames of animation for your hero! Talk about lazy! The same goes for the enemy characters: they run and jump exactly as you do. No inspiration, no motivation, no nothing; they move like zombies in slo-motion . Which brings me to another point. Occasionally, you are allowed to take control of some vehicle, like a tank or a helicopter. Sounds fun but it's not! I mean: the animation for the vehicles is so ridiculous, so unrealistic, so pathetic, that when I first boarded a helicopter and started controlling it, I burst out in laughter. I actually had to pause the game to roll on the floor while laughing my guts off! Unlike in Contra III, where you hop into a tank and you FEEL like you are driving a tank (slow but powerful, hard to maneuver, there's a recoil after you fire the cannon), in GunForce the vehicles you control look like cardboard cut-outs. Sad. Tragic. The enemies you face, as well as the bosses, are so unimaginative and lame that I felt sorry for them the whole time. ''Poor bastards'', I thought, ''they are stuck in one of the worst games of all time, and they know it!'' In fact, I think I saw one of them commit suicide. Stuck his rifle in his mouth and blew his head apart. I bet he feels relieved now.

The sound in GunForce is terrible. The music is extremely boring an uninspired; sounds like something for a XXX movie. With the then-astounding capabilities of the SNES sound processor, the programmers could have put a little more effort in their work. The sound effects are equally bad, the worse being you character's death scream, which sounds like a cat that has been set on fire.

The controls are nothing to write home about: run, jump and shoot. At least they are somehow responsive not to make you want to break the controller.

Finally, the gameplay. Usually Contra-type games don't have much replay value. Either you end up frustrated at the game's incredible difficulty (since these games are usually impossible) or you finish the game once and you never pick it up again. The case with GunForce was different. This game is so putrid I don't want to see it again. Ever. Games like this insult the intelligence of the gamer.

The final word: Stay away from this pile of crap.

Reviewer's Score: 3/10, Originally Posted: 08/28/03