Heroic Like Tufts of Grass Emerging From Concrete
"Star Gun Heroes" is another mouse-aimed side-scrolling shooter with plenty of good retro (add: pixel-laden) graphics and few decent effects but with an imbalanced presentation. It doesn't shine too high above anyone else's game, but it's a solid fifteen minutes of fun with a good soundtrack and arcade feel, even with those inane browser game conventions.
Though there are four characters presented (and it appears as though they are over their heads according to the introduction), one is playable at first. He can double-jump, barely getting over the minor precipices, and can aim his hardware anywhere, which lets him clip oncoming machines that beset him from all sides. It also makes fighting stationary shooting devices a cinch, because all you do is stay on a platform above or below where the machine is shooting. Other devices are littered throughout the game and simple strategies can dispose of them also. The end bosses are big and imposing, but due to a lack of hitTest finesse, all you do is hose them until they're dead; there are no "weak points" or intricate patterns to exploit. Just stay out of the line of fire or keep moving around, and fire away.
See a pattern? This game does not have any grasp of what made Gunstar Heroes a memorable experience. That game featured unusual innovations that stuck out in players' minds. But here? Too few enemy types that are repeated throughout all six stages of the game. The stages themselves are equivalent to each other in terms of length, and those stages are short. Too short.
To add to the bare-bones grievances, the only power-ups are crystals that improve firepower, up to an extraordinary gradient. Life becomes very simple once the final version of a weapon is reached, but it can be tricky when you get injured; it reduces the potency by an increment each time, until you're stuck with nothing. Coins are worthless for unlocking the other characters if you know how to use the first, or use the secret one, which looks eerily similar to Solid Snake (homage to Konami, since the game development team "Treasure" consisted of a bunch of ex-Konami types, and that Star Gun Heroes mimics Gunstar Heroes, Treasure's first project). Having to acquire coins in a stage to unlock a character, rather than achieving some other benchmark of performance (like a kill count), is very browser-esque thinking which has not gotten out of its own box quite yet. We've seen it all before, but considering they handle differently from one another, is it really necessary to "unlock" an allegedly superior character? That means lesser characters get no love, a mere stepping stone tread upon by greasy-palmed power-players who just want the "Best of the Best". If this was a deeper game, I would muster up the desire to cry foul, improper game balance! But it isn't.
Now, even though secret characters have differences in their mobility and certain drawbacks, any of them can traverse a level without any problems beyond the shoddy controls themselves. Handling is like a cow on skates. Not fun when you're slip-sliding because the game has no understanding of traction or inertia. Other issues that come into play revolve around the soundtrack. The music fits, but overpowers the muffled and limited diversity of sound effects. By that I mean there are, like, ten, maybe THREE different sound effects. No grunts when getting blasted, no machinery shrieking, no red alerts, nothing. Adding more sounds isn't even the solution when the music will just overpower them. Finally, this game has the most dissatisfying rub-it-in-your-eye ending that almost insults the intelligence of its audience, considering they ALREADY KNOW THE GAME WAS TOO EASY AFTER LEVEL ONE!
There is a game inside "Star Gun Heroes", a seed of what could be. Right now, it's just a frilly beta with little content to hold up against other games of its ilk. It's pretty and, given some extra time to add sounds and a challenge factor, can transcend its current phase of mediocrity. The characters don't even have names, for the love of God.