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If I'd known the last time I played this I was almost done, I might've pushed through with it. Gunman Clive, it turns out, is an incredibly short game.
How short?
"I beat it in about an hour, though at least half of that hour was screaming at some spicy bullshit platforming". Twenty stages total (four of which are bosses), designed to be cleared in a minute or two.
Aesthetically it's fantastic, the entire thing being in a sort of sketchbook scribblevision that lends itself surprisingly well not just to motion, but to the 3DS's autostereoscopic visuals. This may be the first 3DS game that I enjoyed watching more in 3D, amazingly.
The tone is... well, it doesn't really play things serious at all, but it doesn't try to force attention on its weirdness. Your girlfriend (or the titular Gunman Clive, if you decide to play as said girlfriend) is kidnapped by bandits, and later on you chase them into a spaceship on the moon and your final boss looks like he came from Steamworld Dig. It's... it sure is a game, yep. That's not a bad thing.
Gameplay-wise, it's very similar to Megaman or Contra (as is the usual style of platformer I enjoy but I can't actually clear for the life of me), though it leans more towards the former, what with having a life bar and ladders and yoku blocks and all. It's also infuriatingly tight as far as platforming goes in later stages, though thankfully death just places you at the beginning of the stage. ("Thankfully" because, again, each stage is about 90 seconds long in a successful run. You're not punished too hard for sucking at this game.)
Is it worth the two bucks it's asking for? I mean... if you're the type who tries for speedruns or high scores, maybe. A normal, casual playthrough is over in an hour and if you want to get more replay out of it, you're playing at harder difficulties or playing as a duck or trying to get through the game faster. There's not much to it. You could definitely do worse, though, and it's one of those indie games that is out on literally everything and a bagel at this point.
How short?
"I beat it in about an hour, though at least half of that hour was screaming at some spicy bullshit platforming". Twenty stages total (four of which are bosses), designed to be cleared in a minute or two.
Aesthetically it's fantastic, the entire thing being in a sort of sketchbook scribblevision that lends itself surprisingly well not just to motion, but to the 3DS's autostereoscopic visuals. This may be the first 3DS game that I enjoyed watching more in 3D, amazingly.
The tone is... well, it doesn't really play things serious at all, but it doesn't try to force attention on its weirdness. Your girlfriend (or the titular Gunman Clive, if you decide to play as said girlfriend) is kidnapped by bandits, and later on you chase them into a spaceship on the moon and your final boss looks like he came from Steamworld Dig. It's... it sure is a game, yep. That's not a bad thing.
Gameplay-wise, it's very similar to Megaman or Contra (as is the usual style of platformer I enjoy but I can't actually clear for the life of me), though it leans more towards the former, what with having a life bar and ladders and yoku blocks and all. It's also infuriatingly tight as far as platforming goes in later stages, though thankfully death just places you at the beginning of the stage. ("Thankfully" because, again, each stage is about 90 seconds long in a successful run. You're not punished too hard for sucking at this game.)
Is it worth the two bucks it's asking for? I mean... if you're the type who tries for speedruns or high scores, maybe. A normal, casual playthrough is over in an hour and if you want to get more replay out of it, you're playing at harder difficulties or playing as a duck or trying to get through the game faster. There's not much to it. You could definitely do worse, though, and it's one of those indie games that is out on literally everything and a bagel at this point.
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