Gatling Gears first appeared on Xboxes a couple of months ago now, but has only recently appeared on PSN, and they are all the better for it. On the surface it’s a simple twin-stick shooter, but this game is so much more than that, with a great visuals, sounds and gameplay itself.
The tutorial places you in the training camp of a growing empire, and as Max Brawley you are placed inside a mechanised walker and get to stomp and smash your way through the training exercises, blowing some stuff up as go when out of nowhere the enemy attacks! You soon learn that they are no match for your mechanical self as you beat them back to the village they supposedly attacked from, but it’s at this point you and the Empire’s goals divide as when you are ordered to destroy the villagers your character refuses to do so and flees to the country to live a life of peace.
Fast forward a decade or so later and you are living a happy life in the countryside with your daughter when the Empire’s growing area of influence finally reaches your quiet hamlet and you have to once again become a man of war to find out what the Empire are doing.
Playing the game is great fun; you’ve got the basic controls of any twin-stick shooter, left stick to move and right stick to shoot using your titular gatling gun but you’ve also got some secondary attacks to master which although you don’t actually need to use to complete the levels, they will help you greatly come the later sections of the game. The rocket attacks work well, as long as you can get your aim right, but the grenades could do with some tweaking, as the aim system is a bit if a pain to use in the middle of an action packed scene, although it’s easy enough to use during the quieter parts of the game. Your final secondary attack is a use-once-per-level explosion which all but wipes out everything on the screen; it’s useful but you get a bonus for not using it so I all but ignored it for the majority of the game.
