Gunstar Super Heroes

"Platform entertainment at it's best."

Game Review: Gunstar Super Heroes

Overview:

Gunstar Super Heroes is the long awaited sequel to the cult hit Gunstar Heroes for Sega Genesis. Treasure has been a long time indie game developer since most of it's members broke off from Konami in the past. Since then, the company has strayed away from sequels. This may or may not be a good thing, considering that todays entertainment market is almost exclusively built on sequels. However, Treasure decided to kick the habit earlier in the year with Advance Guardian Heroes, and again with this Gameboy Advance title, Gunstar Super Heroes. Right now, we are sort of in a reawakening of platform titles, as seen in many recent releases, and this is the best I have seen out of the bunch.

I never played Gunstar Heroes myself, as I never owned a genesis. This will allow me to write a less biast review on the game, without considering the title it is expected to live up to. Most people I know who have played the original have liked this title immensely anyway. I am also told that the game has countless similarities to the original, and you must keep in mind if you are playing the new game that it is, in fact, a sequel despite how overly similar the two may be, and not all elements from the game are taken from it's predecessor.

Storyline: 8/10

Gunstar Super Heroes circles around a band of crime-fighting earth-saving heroes named, simply, "Red," "Blue," and "Yellow." Red and Blue go out and do all of the handiwork for the team to reach their objectives, while Yellow is the information connection for them.

A long time ago, a group known as "The Gunstar Heroes" defeated a great evil, and it's remnants were scattered around planet earth, creating four new moons. Along with this moon, an independent party known as "The Empire" created a fortress which also revolves around the earth. Four stones were the actual creating force behind these moons. It is said that if these four stones are brought together, the great evil may be reawakened. This is the current goal of The Empire... To bring these stones together and eventually rule earth and it's surrounding moons.

The pace of the story moves along rather quickly, but for the most part, the player knows what is going on. I say for the most part because all of the time, the player will know where to go. Two dimensional platformers have no confusion when it comes to knowing where to go. Your goal is always to the side of the screen you did not come from, but your ultimate goals are also very clear. You may not know exactly how some details came to be where they are, but this is actually explained later. The story has several twists and turns that you may or may not expect, and until the end of the game, you will be kept guessing.

Beating the game on different difficulties means completely revamped text for each segment of script, which is all done very well. This means that for the initially short script that the game has, all of the text evens out to six times as much of that. Each character talks with some kind of personality, and realistically as well. The text is very well written, but the only problem is that there is not too much character development. But is there supposed to be? Very few platformers have character development as it is, and having any at all is very good for a game of this type.

To be honest with you, the eight out of ten score almost seems cruel. When you are playing through the game, you will not have any gruff about the storyline whatsoever. The only problem is due to the fact that the story is relatively short, a problem caused by the length of the game itself. An eight is considered great, so don't let that first score let you down.

Gameplay: 10/10

If the game shines anywhere, it is unmistakably here. The fun factor of the game is pretty much flawless.

You progress through the game by level, and through levels by stages. Each stage is relatively small, but unspeakably action packed. Each level consists of anywhere between two and five stages. However, there are not many levels total. That is where the biggest flaw in the game is seen... It is very short. But to be honest with you, the replay value of the game and the sheer perfection of it's gameplay more than makes up for the short length.

You can choose between two different characters to play: the spunky femme fatale Red and the lax but wise Blue. Also, you can choose between three different difficulty levels. Gameplay consists of what gives the game it's title. Guns. Three different kinds actually, and you have infinite ammo for each. This is a very comforting fact, considering the sheer number of enemies you will face throughout the game. Most of these enemies are very similar to one another, with white suits, blue pants, and chilling eyes, and others are unique and creative, making the player deal with them in more particular, creative ways. You progress through each stage while defeating an unbelievable amount of foes and bosses. The mood of the game can be described as action packed, and every second is filled with blood pumping amounts of energy. And explosions.
Lots and lots of explosions.

On average, there will be an explosion on your screen every half second, maybe more. Every enemy you defeat will produce one, and considering there are more enemies in the game than carter has pills, you will be shocked yourself at all of the ruckus that is going on in your GBA. And there are numerous ways to defeat enemies in order to produce these explosions.

Your character has three guns that they use as weapons: your standard all-purpose gun which varies depending on your character, a more powerful short range gun used for when power is needed and your enemy is close to you, and a homing gun used when you really have no time to aim. All three are very usable, and you will rarely find yourself sticking to one of them to get an advantage, because all three are very useful. In addition to having the three guns, whenever you hurt an enemy with a certain gun, a special meter for that gun will fill up. When this meter blinks, you can pull of a very powerful special shot which can do a number of things depending on the gun. This is not a feature that should only be saved for difficult boss battles only, and can also be applied to less dire situations to make things more convenient and easy for you.

On top of all this, you have a highly convenient set of melee attacks at your disposal which you can use at short range. And these actually work as well. It may be less tricky to just shoot your enemy, but when you are surrounded, it may be a better idea to rely on your sword for a little bit of power too. In many places, you can also hang from ceilings and platforms, able to shoot down as you move across these rails. As you can see, while you are playing, there will be a gigantic number of things happening on the screen, and even you may be a little disoriented because of all of this, but in no time, you will be running around and shooting things like a pro.

The game has a number of distinct environments for you to explore, and each environment has it's own unique obstacles and enemies for you to deal with. In addition, not all of your adventure will be on foot. You will pick up a number of vehicles to use in different places. Frequently, your pal Yellow will fly her ship around while you are on top, blasting away at oncoming fleets of enemies. In another classic arcade esque stage, you will fly through the level in a helicopter with a birds eye view, able to drop bombs on enemies on the ground and shoot airborne enemies with a machine gun. And that is by no means all of the vehicles you will man.

Once again, the game is rather short, but it has been stated from the people at Treasure that if the game was longer, the fantastic results that come with the game may not have been possible. You will still find yourself amazed at how fun blasting through the opposition is, and how mindbendingly creative all of the gameplay elements are.

Graphics: 10/10

Gunstar Super Heroes easily has the best graphics I have seen the GBA take advantage of, and surely they are the best there are.

Movement of enemies and environments is extremely fluid and beautiful. Some of the grahpics still shock me even after having played through the game so much. It is really astounding how much detail was put into landscapes and backgrounds that you never see more than once through the span of the game. I can only imagine how painstaking this project must have been for the graphic designers. Thankfully, their surely hard work pays off marvelously. Every aspect of the graphics is great. The most used graphic in the game, the always welcome explosion, is actually done with a great deal of skill and precision, as are other common graphics like beams, fireballs, and common enemies.

As I said, less common things are also very impressive to the eye. One distinct example I can think of would be some actual pixelated water effects streaming down the side of a large building at one point. You only see this graphic at this building, never again, and it's quality is beyond immediate comprehension. It sure shocked me. You will constantly have moments like this, and I encourage you to appreciate the little one time graphics in this game thoroughly!
Things almost have a 3D depth to them. And when enemies, environments, and players move around, there is a distinct 3D edge to them which is extremely impressive. And some background graphics don't just have a 3D feel. They ARE 3D, and you move through them in a 3D way.

To be quite honest with you, I can't think of one area of the graphics in the game where the creators got in the least bit lazy. This is nothing short of perfection when it comes to graphics on a pixelated handheld. It is beautiful to look at. All objects, enemies, environments, and character portraits are very inventive and colorful. And it is clearly pushing the hardware to it's limits. If graphics mean something special to you, you need to see this to believe it.

Sound: 10/10

As far as music goes, the score says it all. Each area has it's own music that never gets aggravating on old, and even if it did, it's not like it impedes your concentration or anything like that. And it always goes with the type of area you are in too. If you listen really hard, you can hear some music aspects that are very similar to what other Treasure titles have sported. Beyond that, each track has a pleasing amount of energy.

The sound effects are great too. Shooting, hitting, etc are all represented by smooth effects. Melee attacks on enemies have funny comical sounds to go along with them. The sound effects are ultimately great, but there is nothing that stands out about them, thankfully, this is the goal that sucessful sound effects set out to achieve. Also, some actual voice acting is used. I'm assuming it is computer generated, but with that said, it sounds great. Of course, only certain in game lines are given voices, but when it does happen, it proves to be a neat little touch.

Controls: 10/10
You have to pick up on the controls yourself, and you will soon see that they are very fluid and simple. You can do actions however you please. Typically, tapping the shooting button once activates a melee attack, while holding it triggers your gun. This may take a little bit of getting used to at first, but it comes very quickly. Other issues are very small and not vital to the gameplay. If you do not like the default controls, you actually have four different schemes. So play around with them a little and find which one you like most.

Difficulty: 10/10
There are three difficulties for you to play on: Easy, Normal, and Hard. Each is aptly named. Easy is what you would expect it to be. The game may be a breeze for even mildly experienced platform fans. Normal requires some thinking and strategy to tackle levels effectively, and Hard requires all of your brain power and coordination to tackle. You will never feel like the game is too easy when you don't want it to be, and the difficulty curve is perfect.

Replayability: 9/10

There are no unlockables in Gunstar Super Heroes, which makes it even more amazing that playing through the game numerous times is fun. You can beat the game as many times on any difficulty as you want without getting bored. Any fans of platform games know that simple pleasures come in situations as simple as stomping goombas or shooting metroids, but Gunstar Heroes takes those simple pleasures to their breaking point without actually going over the edge. You can tackle any given situation in a number of ways that you choose, and levels never get old. Ever. If you don't believe me, just pick up the game, and you will be hooked; the game is surprisingly addictive for a short platformer.

And for arcade fans that strive for high scores and low times, you can still have a lot of fun trying for high scores and low times in each level. Both are recorded individually for each stage of each level of each difficulty for each character, so you can run time attacks for as long as you want just to save a second or two, and that is also a very gratifying feeling that many people who play video games today are spoiled by. If you miss the days where score mattered, but don't want to fall back down the pit of inferior technology that games today have climbed out of, this is your ticket.

Also, playing through the game on different difficulties with either character reveals text that are exclusive to that play through, so that will keep you interested for a while. But once again, the pleasure of just playing through the game will keep you busy anyway.

Pros:
-Extremely fun shooter/platformer gameplay
-The best graphics the GBA has to offer
-Great sound
-A host of useful weapons
-A nifty high score system
-Hey, it's made by Treasure. What bad things have they done?

Cons:
-VERY short.
-Not as much text as I would have liked.
-No 2-Player Co-op, a feature of the original game. This however is no biggie. If they included that, the game surely would not be as fantastic, and a two player co-op would surely have been unwieldy and laggy because of the nature of the GBA and the game itself. And you and your friends can still compete for high scores.

Overall: 10/10
Perfect in almost every aspect. Handheld games rarely get better than this. Platformers rarely get better than this. Hell, video games rarely get better than this. This will surely be another unseen gem due to its lack of publicity (that I have seen anyway), but that does not mean that it is no good. If you own a Gameboy Advance, you NEED this game. Everyone should have it.

Rent or Buy?:
It is almost impossible to rent GBA games in this day and age. You are better off just buying than trying to find a place to rent it. I guarantee you won't be disappointed.

Reviewer's Score: 10/10, Originally Posted: 12/15/05