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Gunstorm II: Starvixen

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Developer: Cornutopia
Publisher: Cornutopia
Genre: Action > Shooter
Released: Jan 01, 2007
Players: 1

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- Gunstorm 2 Review

Gunstorm II by Cornutopia is an entry into the sci-fi shooter arena which already has some fairly stiff competition. Although it feels like a throwback to the Asteroids genre, when playing this game you feel somewhat like a sea pirate; thar�"s gold to be had, but you have to dig to find it.

For those who worry about storylines in their Asteroids games, the call to arms for the player is that a Princess Semele has been kidnapped by Kernag the Smeeb on the evening of her wedding to the Prince Caligula- I mean Caligulus. Okay, so the main storyline will not win a Pulitzer. The plot motivation is paper thin at best, but that is fine by me so long as there are a variety of power-ups and explosions.

The game is a top-down asteroids-like shooter with the enemy ships entering from the surrounding borders of the screen to rain flurries of laser bolts at your fighter. At various intervals of the fighting, enemy mother ships join the party and try to blast you to space dust. Gunstorm II does deliver in the power-ups and explosions department, and I was doubly pleased to see that the introduction of any explosion did not have a negative impact on the frame rate.

While the power-ups in the game were quite devastating and worth risking your ship to grab, it was difficult to differentiate between them as they were all just a multitude of colored geometry. There was also no real cue given to the player as to which function each power-up had, so you end up grabbing all of them with the hope that it would not penalize you in some way, such as slowing your movement and/or shot power. Another wrinkle arose when I realized that there was a type of enemy ship so tiny, that it almost matched the same shape as a power-up. I died more than a few times by simply crashing into them, expecting to level-up my weapons but instead suffering a hot magma bath.

Perhaps it is my touch of ADD reigning supreme, but I found the action in the beginning to be a lot slower than I was hoping for. In fact, it took quite a while before a substantial number of ships came into the killzone. Instead of showing up in any kind of a wave formation, however, they seemed to randomly trickle into view. That being said, the game did definitely increase the level of excitement as the pace picked up which is always a plus.

On a different direction from a lot of the other shooter games, Gunstorm II begins with its own theme song (with wurds!). Although slightly on the cheesy side, I thought it was an original way to immediately grab the attention of the player. Unfortunately, the pacing and use of the music itself is somewhat ruined by the fact that as soon as you begin the game, you are met with complete silence. It was so disconcerting in fact, that I restarted the game several times just to make sure it was not a bug with my sound configuration.

The controls of the game default to the mouse with the left-button handling your weapons, and the right controlling the thrust of your ship. Once the action started picking up however, I found myself somewhat disappointed that I could not configure the game to use the keyboard for movement, and the mouse for firing. This unnecessary lack of functionality cost me more than a few ships in several situations, so hopefully Cornutopia introduces this capability in a future build of the game.

Graphics:
While a bit more work could be thrown into the various ships, I did not have any big problem with the existing artwork in the game and felt that it accomplished the art style of Gunstorm II. At the very least, all that would need touching up is some differentiation between the power-ups and to provide some cue as to what their power-up function was.

Sound:
I really enjoyed the composition of the theme song to the game, but it seemed to come at the expense of any background music during the game itself. The actual in-game sound effects were also well done, and I liked the use of the voices.

Gameplay:
While it was a pretty good shmup / asteroids type of game, I think the controls introduced more barriers and/or difficulty to the game than was necessary. Even if I did not have the ability to define my own control layout, hopefully at the very least Cornutopia introduces the option for an input scheme that allows both keyboard and mouse input. On another note, the aliens were also at times frustrating to burn down because they had the ability to outrun your laser fire.

Concept:

There was nothing really that original with the game concept, but I did think there was enough there to keep you interested. If you are able to make it past the first level or so, you do begin to unlock other features to the game which do provide more incentive to keep you playing. While some other shooters needlessly punished the player, at least in Gunstorm II your progress was maintained even after death.

Value:
While you have pretty much seen everything before in this type of game, there was enough there in Gunstorm II to keep you playing. The sound quality of the effects were nice and crisp, and you are more than likely going to listen to the main theme song in its entirety at least once. The power-ups and explosions fit properly into the game, and there is some replay value as you can unlock various features in the game and your progress is not instantly erased when you die.

Recommendation:
If you are already a fan of the shooter genre, then you may want to take a look at GunstormII. Although this game shows some good production values, I think it could withstand a bit more tweaking here and there which would really improve the product.

By: Erik Yuzwa
Posted: Wednesday June 27, 2007