Game #944: Skygunner

  Aim for the skies.... and shoot'em down.

 I've never been much of a fan of dogfighting games, I tried the Ace Combat series one time but it just wasn't for me. That said, a ton of years ago, there I was at the flea market, and this super colorful cover catches my eye, Skygunner it was titled, and while it wasn't my cup of tea... it sure was charming. And now here I am finally getting to write about it.

 The game lets you play as two different characters... at first, but you can unlock another three if you are good enough. Each character has a different difficulty setting and while all five stages are shared, different characters may get different objectives in them, sometimes. Besides difficulty settings, every character has their own unique action, for example Ciel can stop mid-air and unleash a barrage of heavy machinegun fire, setting them slightly apart, plus, while you have three sub-weapons with you at all times, characters may have different loadouts, for instance, Ciel and Femme have the same loadout, but Copain swaps one of their sub weapons for pumpkin bombs.

 Getting the hang of the controls may take a while, for instance, you are always locking onto something, so if you want to move elsewhere, and see where you are going, you'd best try to lock on to something that's on that way, by tapping triangle in order to switch between targetable enemies. Barrel rolls, your best evasive maneuver, is done by pressing L3 while moving or by pressing a direction on the digital pad and letting go after a short while. As I'm saying, it takes a little while, but you can get used to it.

 The game is kinda hard. Kinda. Just getting through the game is easy enough, but actually scoring high in order to get upgrades, which will help you in unlocking two of the three unlockables? Good luck. Firing at thin air deducts points, using too many sub weapons deducts points, plus, you are trying to shoot down enemies WHILE other allies do so as well, so they may rob you of points. Actually scoring high is the real challenge, and man oh man is it tough. I was only able to unlock Copain!

 That said, the game is SO cute, and it's arcadey nature makes it pretty darn fun. A single playthrough lasts about hour and a half, which is more than fair considering you get up to five different playable characters. So, while it ain't my cup of tea, I'll always call a spade a spade as well as a good game a good game.

 7.5