Gunlord X

Genre: Action-Platformer / Shmup

Players: 1

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Review:

Gunlord is an Action-Platformer with some Shmup levels originally designed for the NEOGEO console, but put on hold during development, then ultimately finished and released on the Dreamcast in 2012. An upgraded version of the game dubbed Gunlord X was released on PlayStation 4 and Nintendo Switch in 2019. This game’s designers said they were inspired by the Turrican, Contra, and Metroid franchises, and this game bears some elements of all of those games.

Given the lineage of this game, it won’t be surprising to hear that this game’s presentation seems like it came straight out of the 16-bit era of games, because it essentially did. Still, the amount of detail and imagination present here puts many modern “retro”-style games to shame, with tons of action on-screen at any given time and multi-scrolling backgrounds. In addition to this, the game touts an excellent synthesized soundtrack, with fantastic tunes like Steel and Thunder, Dreamy Ruins, Techno Dungeon, Acid Pipe, and Alive.

When it comes to the gameplay, this game starts with a gameplay formula straight out of Turrican, featuring Action-Platforming with a heavy emphasis on gunning down hordes of enemies, combined with some level exploration to seek out bonuses (in this case, pink jewels needed to continue are hidden in every level, and you won’t want to miss them). Add to this weapon upgrades and enemy designs that would seem at home in the Contra series, and finish it off with a rolling ball move that lets you drop bombs, which this game’s protagonist must have picked up the same place Metroid’s Samus got the technique.

The result is a game that’s heavy on action, with mostly linear levels that throw in some exploration for good measure. Most of the time, this makes for an outstanding experience, as players feel like an absolute force to be reckoned with, a huge arsenal of weapons, a short-range move that can be aimed with the right stick to hit hard-to-reach enemies, and tons of power-ups. This game does a great job of empowering the player and making them feel like a powerhouse.

Wellllll… most of the time, anyway. A few issues hamper this great empowered feeling. Firstly, players will have to contend with their character’s relatively large size compared to the screen, which results in enemies getting in easy ambushes frequently, and plenty of frustrating “leaps of faith”. The other issue is boss fights, when the flow of power-ups stops coming, and players actually need to worry about that “three hits and your dead” thing that health pickups negate for much of the rest of the game.

This makes for frustrating difficulty spikes at bosses and in those areas the game punishes you for not being able to see off-screen, when the rest of the game has a relatively low difficulty by comparison. This is particularly frustrating due to the game’s limited continues, resulting in you feeling like you’re powering through all the opposition, only to die due to a few cheap shots and have to start the game over from the beginning.

I suppose I should also mention the Shmup stages. They’re good, but nothing particularly extraordinary for the genre, outside of how forgiving they are (again, you get three hits before losing a life).

Overall, while Gunlord X has some issues with difficulty spikes and limited range of view that make for frustration, this is still overall an outstanding Action-Platformer, and one that fans of the genre should absolutely play, at least if they don’t mind contending with the aforementioned issues.

tl;dr – Gunlord X is an Action-Platformer originally intended for the Neo Geo, and because of this it feels like a blast from the past, with tons of great Turrican-style action interspersed with some Shmup-style stages. The gameplay suffers a bit due to a limited point of view and boss battles that result in difficulty spikes, but this is still overall a superb Action game well worth playing, especially for fans of the genre.

Grade: B

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