Gungage (Playstation)

 Something that I've been thinking of with regards to current videogames is the way in which certain control schemes have become ubiquitous, and the way in which this makes it difficult for games to have their own identity beyond feeling like reskins of the same basic concept. "Current" isn't really accurate of this phenomenon, come to think of it: I remember playing Gears of War and Army of Two on the same day at a friend's house fifteen years ago, and they felt like exactly the same game, except one had you shooting aliens, and one had you shooting people of colour.

 

Those are both third person shooters, and obviously, both are hurt by the way in which that genre had become "solved" and homogenised in the years leading up to their release, causing the situation which I described in the first paragraph, whereby it becomes more difficult for games in a "solved" genre to carve an identity for themselves. Gungae is also a third person shooter, from a much earlier point in the genre's existence, and as such, it doesn't use the now standardised controls of "left stick to move, right stick to aim, right shoulder to shoot". It's got controls that, on paper, sound like they'd be awkward and difficult to play with: the d-pad is used for turning and moving forwards and backwards, with strafing mapped to L1 and R1. (Note: Gungage did come out after the Dual Shock controller, so could theoretically hve used the standard control scheme. In fact, Love and Destroy, which released on Playstation six months after Gungage actually does use that control scheme!) 

 

Anyway, despite the entirety of the past two paragraphs, I'm not saying that the modern standard 3D action game control layout is bad, but rather it's the monolithic ubiquity of it that's bad: You can make games that control differently! It's okay! (Furthermore, the same thing can be seen in other genres to a lesser extent. I think if you were to release a Mercs/Commando/etc. style top down shooter now, you'd get people asking why you didn't use twinstick controls.) So Gungage, then. The reason I'm using this game to talk about this subject is that it has a bunch of playable characters. Four in total, though I've only been able to unlock three so far: Wakle Skade the typical late 90s protagonist, Kard Berdysh the big rectangular military officer, and Steyr Harquebus the rebel terrorist girl.

 

What's significant is that though they go through the same areas (albeit in different orders, and sometimes with different enemies and slightly different layouts), and despite the fact that they're all obviously in the same game, all the characters feel completely different to each other as you play as them. It's not as simple as Kard being tougher and slower, or Wakle being the all-rounder, but they also have completely different main weapons, their super-weapons work in completely different ways, and the way they move all feel differently to each other. Wakle's got an automatic pistol, Kard has a big cannon with four different firing modes for different situations, and Steyr has a gatling gun that's as tall as her, yet she can run around firing like nobody's business. 

 

More important than them all feeling different to each other, they also all feel great to play as. Wakle introduces you to the way movement and aiming work in the game at their most basic levels, Kard has you trying your hardest not to get hit while firing your slow, devastating arsenal (as well as picking the best of his weapons for each situation), and Steyr has you running and flipping around, shooting enemies and dodging their attacks with agility and grace, almost like a character from a more modern character action game like Bayonetta or the later entries in the Oneechanbara series. Furthermore, the stages themselves are designed in such a way that they're interesting to traverse and explore. You never feel lost, but you always feel like you can run around and seek out secrets. AND! The fact that the different characters do reach them at different times, with different enemies, and so on, really makes them feel like actual locations, where different things are happening in them at different times. 

 

Gungage is an excellent game, and one that's worth the time of anyone with even a passing interest in 3D action games. It's a mystery and a shame that it's not more well known. It actually did get a western release, and I don't remember anyone talking about it at that time. I didn't even see it in magazines! A new 3D action game from Konami, a year after their massive hit Metal Gear Solid, and it somehow just slipped under the radar? Madness. Fix the mistakes of the past, and play Gungage now. (But as always, don't pay the ludicrous online prices it fetches.)