G.G Series: Altered Weapon

Genre: Action-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

Altered Weapon is an Action-Platformer released on the Nintendo DSi via the DSiWare service in 2015, as well as being made available on the Nintendo 3DS eShop. In this game, players fight through enemies as a robot that can transform into a wheeled vehicle, with each of its two forms having different abilities.

The presentation here is mostly pretty good, making use of 2D pixel art visuals for its characters and backgrounds. This is backed by a repetitive Action theme that I know has been recycled from one of the other G.G games (many of the games in this series share assets with each other), but I can’t place which one right now.

The gameplay in Altered Weapon is actually very good, with each of the two forms presenting different strengths and weaknesses – the robot can jump higher, has a much faster firing rate, and is more versatile, while the vehicle is faster, jumps farther, fits in smaller spaces, and has much more powerful individual shots. Neither of these forms is clearly the better of the two, and the level design pushes players to make use of both forms.

Players can select which order to tackle the game’s stages in, though this seems like it was largely unnecessary, as each sequential stage clearly sees a rise in difficulty. Each stage has its own background and is further subdivided into three separate sections (think checkpoints), with a boss at the end. This works well enough, and the pacing here is pretty good.

No, the problem with this game isn’t its gameplay, pacing, or presentation, it’s the game’s length. Depending on the skill of the player, players will find themselves blasting through this game within the span of an hour, possibly even less. And while it’ll be quite a good hour, there’s not really any reason to go back into the game after finishing it.

Is $2 for a solid hour or so of gameplay worth it for you? If that sounds decent enough, and you enjoy Action-Platformers, Altered Weapon will be well worth a look. This game features solid gameplay with good level design and pacing. It’s just a shame that it wasn’t expanded into a larger game.

tl;dr – Altered Weapon is an Action-Platformer where players control a robot that can transform into a wheeled vehicle. The gameplay here is great, and the presentation is pretty good too. The real problem here is the game’s length, as this game will only last you about an hour or so. However, if $2 for a solid hour of Action-Platformer gameplay sounds good to you, Altered Weapon will definitely be worth a look.

Grade: C+

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