Jets ‘n’ Guns Gold

Written by Jake on June 8th, 2007 and posted in Reviews
Tags : 2D, action, downloadable, Indie, pc, shoot em up

Jets ‘n’ Guns Gold, by Rake In Grass, is one of the best and most manic shooters I’ve ever played. Well actually I’ve played a lot of great Japanese style bullet curtain shooters which are also totally manic - most of them are freeware and totally obscure. Jets ‘n’ Guns is an Indie game and comes in two flavours: Original ($19.95) and Gold ($29.95). I’m pretty sure that you can upgrade the original version to the Gold version as well.

I’ve been reviewing the gold version and it rocks but it’s also very hard (at least I find it hard and I’m not a total novice a shoot ‘em ups). It’s a side scrolling shoot ‘em up and also the screen scrolls up and down a bit giving the level some more depth. The graphics are very good and detailed, and have their own character. They are also a bit gory because you can blow up little men on the ground or men that fall out of spaceships and they spray blood everywhere – this is pretty cool and more funny than gross of course. There’s also tons of particle effects and stuff going on all over the place like shell casings being ejected and smoke trails etc.

There is a plot with comic book style story panels, but I’ve got to honest, I haven’t been paying a whole lot attention to it because it’s so preposterous and obscure Having said that, the early plot screens give you gameplay tips and they are worth reading.

There are some crazy levels like one with flying coffins, mausoleums and some zombies having a gig. Also another level has some kind of alien beer cube like the Borg from Star Trek and lots of beer bottles and a giant drunk rat. Actually I found some of the themes a bit too obscure and they spoiled the vibe of the game for me.

There seems to be two main sorts of levels, space based ones and ground based ones where you fly along over some ground and can drop bombs. Dropping bombs is good fun and there’s plenty of destructible scenery to mash. There’s also a racing level where you have to get through some awkwardly placed gates – this was pretty hard and took me a few tries. At a couple of points in the game you loose your ship and have to fight as a man in a spacesuit Jetpac style. Each level has checkpoints, which you can continue from (albeit with reduced armour) – because the levels are so hard, the checkpoints are really useful!

Naturally there’s a shop where you can upgrade all aspects of your ship and buy tons of insane firepower. Each gun, bomb, missile can be upgraded too. The thing is, you have to watch how much power your weaponry consumes because when you play a level you have a heat gauge that goes up as you fire, and when it hits max you can’t fire until it’s cooled down. This adds a tactical element to the game but can prove annoying if you’ve got too much firepower and not enough cooling.

Sound is very good and the music is excellent. The music is made by a real band (Machinae Supremacy) and it’s a cross between metal and C64-style synth music, and it really adds something special to the game.

So what has the gold version got over the normal version? Well the screen is 800×600 instead of 640×480, there are more ships (12), more enemies (270), more levels (43), more weapons (70!), more music and 16 bosses.

There’s a bug right at the start where if you power up your initial weapon (daisy cutter) to level two power, it does no damage! It took a few goes with me thinking “Christ this is hard” and continuously dying before I realised what was going on – weirdly if you power it up to level 3 it’s fine. Anyway all the other weapons seemed fine and I didn’t encounter any more bugs so don’t let that one put you off – I just thought I’d give you a heads up, that’s all,

To summarise, if you haven’t tried it then you must give it a go, but I warn you it’s very hard. For me it’s actually too hard (call me lame) and so I’m going to mark it down a little. There’s no doubt that it’s very well made though and you’ll be playing this for hours if you buy it, although a lot of that may be playing the same level over and over trying to beat it.

• Jets ‘n’ Guns Gold Information

• Jake's Rating :

  Rating: 4
  Readers Rating : no rating yet
• Jets ‘n’ Guns Gold website
• Price : $29.95
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