Gunship for MD PAL

Image: MobyGames

Gunship

Terrible on rails flight sim + bad horizontal shooter

Genre: simulation - flight

Publisher: U.S. Gold

Year: 1994

System: MD PAL

Gameplay Score: 1

Gameplay Notes:

Terrible on almost every way. The on rails sections are a complete waste of time since you have virtually no control of your movement and aiming your reticle is nigh impossible. You even lose all control randomly which opens you up to attach from the enemies who continuously spawn. Like Top Gun you can simply aim up or down and pretend like no one is there until the stage mercifully ends. The side view stages are slightly better but the momentum based movement of your chopper are incredibly frustrating to control.

Level Design Score: 1

Level Design Notes:

Each theater has three stages - aerial, ground, and arms dump (or some other land-based target). And each stage is divided into a worthless on rails sections and an ok but annoying horizonal shooter. You can chart a course through the on rails sections toward your target by setting waypoints on a map. I initially tried hitting as many small targets as I could along the way but this does you no good. It only wastes fuel, ammo, and ensures you arrive at your destination with low health. Best to simply go straight to the target site. The on rails sections also have no structure, just random enemies popping up until the timer says you're at your destination. The side view areas are much better, although they too are poorly designed. Getting to the end as quickly as possible is also the name of the game here. Avoid combat as much as possible and simply get to the only enemy that needs to be destroyed.

Theme Score: 4

Theme Notes:

Militaristic setting and a stoic protagonist with one of the finest mustaches in the 16-bit era. Murica

Art Style Score: 3

Art Style Notes:

The graphics are this game's only saving grace, and only in the horizonal shooter portion. They look on par or even better than Choplifter 3. The on rails levels look very early gen, with terrible scaling and bland backgrounds. The sprites look ok despite the scalaong issues, but if this were the only look in the game this would be a 2 or below.

Audio Score: 2

Audio Notes:

Ok music but horrible sound effects and atrocious voice samples which you can thankfully disable.

Overall Score: 29

Review ID: 6816