Gun.Smoke

Ahh, Gun.Smoke, my favourite oldie and hands down one of the most intense game ever created. Are you feeling masochistic? Then Gun.Smoke is for you, beginners at STG may struggle just to beat 1 or 2 stages, and there's 10 stages here. Gun.Smoke is the embodiment of the "survival" aspect of STG. This is fucking war. You can only count on yourself, and every single dude on the screen is clearly scheming to get you in some way. You have your wits, reflexes and your guns, and you better fucking clear out the bad guys before they gang up on you. The baddies in Gun.Smoke are unlike baddies in other STG. You can't fucking predict them at all! Sure, they may shoot their bullet straight for the most part, so if you didn't know any better you might think well, just herd the bullets like in any other old school STG. No, the problem in Gun.Smoke is that actually killing the enemies and surviving is a real handful. Enemies move erratically, they're unpredictable almost to a degree where you could deem them intelligent. If you let things get out of hand, all of a sudden you have 2 or 3 guys running around behind you, and more and more incoming assholes from the sides and top of the screen. It's up to you to retain control of the game and go after and kill everything you see as soon as you can.

Shooting in Gun.Smoke isn't easy. Usually shooting is the easier part of a shooting game and dodging the harder part. In Gun.Smoke, that's arguable. You only shoot two tiny bullets and they disappear long before they reach the other side of the screen, furthermore, enemies literally come out of fucking everywhere. Gun.Smoke was designed to let you deal with this by giving you the ability to shoot not only forward, but also towards the sides. All in all, there's 5 different angles for you to shoot. Button one shoots more to the left, button three more to the right, and button two shoots straight forward. You can even press button 1 and 2 or 2 and 3 at the same time for extra accuracy, making up 5 angles. Heck, you can press button 1 and 3 to shoot one bullet left and one bullet right, but at that point there's probably too much to keep track of.

Powering up in Gun.Smoke feels pretty natural, you can power up your speed, your shot speed, and your shot distance. Probably the most essential item is the horse, most stages have this item, and it lets you take a bunch of free hits until you lose it. There are lots of different kinds of enemies, and the stage layouts are both varied and honestly ingenious. It's a western-styled game and that comes across magnificently. Oh, and the boss fights are pure mayhem. Each boss is accompanied by a constant onslaught of enemies. You'll spend more time dealing with those enemies than you can get shots at the boss himself. The bosses really get your adrenaline going. Though honestly, they went too far with the final boss, the proper way to fight just feels annoying. Going through the game does feel like a proper adventure. At the start of each stage, you're shown a wanted poster of the boss you're after. Adventure might be putting it lightly though, it's more like a one-sided war. You against the world. I just love that kind of feeling. Few games really make you feel like you're all alone and everything's gonna kill you. Some people say something like Super Metroid makes them feel like that, but I reserve my feelings for Gun.Smoke.

The game is not without its flaws, but they're flaws that seem so small when you get caught in its pace. The barrels that hold items are needlessly difficult to kill, and knowing the contents is simply a matter of memorization. Most barrels are empty and makes you waste valuable time you could've spent clearing out enemies. Say barrels were shot down faster, in that case it wouldn't hurt quite so much if you didn't know what was inside, but as it is, that is a definite flaw. Another flaw is that the way the bosses take damage is unlike other shmups and it just doesn't work well. It's awkward and unreliable. Damaging a boss should be a lot more reliable. There are some bosses that are always vulnerable, but with most of them it's a crapshoot. The scoring is also broken, but that is to be expected of such an old game. There are infinite extends, as well as checkpoints, a bad combination. If I'm not mistaken you can fight the bosses forever and milk the enemies. There is also an infinite checkpoint milk in stage 6 where you can collect an extend item, kill yourself, and go back and redo it.

Gun.Smoke is a classic sadistic game, and the most enjoyable game by Capcom to me. It's a game that you simply have to play if you're up for it, but I do recognize that it's going to be too damn difficult to appreciate for a lot of people. If you try to overcome the difficulty, you will find a game of pure genius design and nearly unmatched intensity. The 6th stage is one of the coolest stages ever, so you're in for a wild ride if you can make it that far.

Gun.Smoke is a slight improvement from 1942, where upgrades such as long-range weapons and speed-ups are more commonplace, controls are tight and snappy, but you also can screw yourself with negative upgrades which take your bonuses away from you(they're shaped like skulls). With that, it's also got a merciless difficulty, and there's a level where you have to raid a camp of natives and mow them down, which is just plain terrible.