Gun Crazy throws you straight into the action playing as a blue-haired heroine, there is no time for a story or any background into why you’ve gone gun crazy, but maybe you don’t always need a reason to cause carnage. Gun Crazy is for the most part a runner gunner kind of game, there are no breaks in between levels, it’s just a mad dash of shooting in vertical or side scrolling perspectives.
In Gun Crazy there are four levels which move along at a super quick pace, the first level is full of random aliens and alien blobs, but you don’t have any time to take in the scenery as that’s blatantly not the point of Gun Crazy. You simply run forward holding the shoot button down, every now and again you pick up a new weapon with a limited amount of ammo which certainly helps. However, once the ammo runs out you return back to your main weapon, it’s a shame really as some of the weapons you pick up would be quite useful for boss battles, plus just having one main weapon gets repetitive after a while. Whilst Gun Crazy is true to its runner gunner mid nineties roots, it’s a shame there are not more weapons to pick from.
You’d be forgiven to think the second level of Gun Crazy is a bonus stage of some kind with the way it is structured, but it is not. There lies the one of many issues Gun Crazy suffers from, there is no direction and every level practically plays the same. There are only four levels in total, two of them are played practically within the same background. Whilst the first level has three bosses in total to beat, the others only have one, none of this is explained, there is no information in regards to why you need to shoot anything in Gun Crazy. The bosses follow the usual case of waiting to see what their attack pattern and just shoot them accordingly.
You can jump, double jump and dash in Gun Crazy, you don’t really have to do any of that, as long as you keep shooting you’ll get quite far. You’re not told how may continues you have should you die, it’s a strange element to leave out, if you do happen to use up all your continues you’ll have to start Gun Crazy from the beginning. Whilst your shooting everything in sight your character also can pull off a melee move, it appears to happen when an enemy is close but as mentioned previously there is very little information in Gun Crazy. Unfortunately as you have no control over this melee move it can sometimes open you up to an enemy projectile or two.
Graphically, Gun Crazy has some beautiful pixel art designs, although you may not appreciate all of it due to the pace of Gun Crazy. The basic gameplay of Gun Crazy and constant action does make if feel fun at times, but it is what you would expect with a nostalgic title like this. Musically, Gun Crazy hits all the right notes but again you’ll be distracted by all the explosions filling the screen up before your eyes. Once completed which will take about 20 or so minutes of a single play through Gun Crazy doesn’t offer anything else for you to go back and beat it again.
Gun Crazy is a throwback to a mid nineties arcade experience, unfortunately once the nostalgia dries up your left with a sometimes fun but very lacking in content game. There isn’t anything new in Gun Crazy and there isn’t much in information either which is something you wouldn’t expect in modern times. Gun Crazy may appeal to the runner gunner fans out there but there are plenty of better and more in depth examples out there to spend your time on.
REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.
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Gun Crazy Review
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Gameplay - 5/10
5/10
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Graphics - 5/10
5/10
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Sound - 5/10
5/10
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Replay Value - 5/10
5/10
Overall
Summary
It’s time to go gun crazy in Gun Crazy!