t is the year 1906 A.D. Britannia rules the waves and the skies—and outer space as well. It is, in fact, a different Earth from the one we learned about in school. Gunvalkyrie, the new anime-inspired action game from Smilebit, is set in an alternate history where Halley's Comet heralded the discovery of a new power source called Halley's core. One man, Dr. Hebble Gate, learned to harness the core as an infinite power source. Such was his genius that he propelled science on Earth out of the Industrial Age and into the Space Age. Genetic engineering appeared and advanced as quickly as rocketry and computing. Sadly, as the game opens, Dr. Gate has disappeared and horrible transformations are taking place on the human colony world of Tir na Nog.
Players take the roles of Kelly O'Lenmey and Saburouta Mishima; it is possible to pick before each mission which character the player wants to control. Both are members of the Gunvalkyrie Corps. They are beings who have been touched by the core's ability to create special powers and who now use those powers for the good of the Empire. Kelly is the agile one that newcomers are encouraged to play because she gets more powerups when she kills one of the enemies. Saburouta has heavier guns and gets fewer powerups. Both wear battle armor and have special moves.
As in Tomb Raider, the point of GV is not so much killing everything in the character's way, although there is lots of killing. The point is to maneuver through the three-dimensional mazes that are the game's levels. The battlesuits have short-range jet packs that allow brief flight or rocket-assisted running in a style that will be familiar to anyone who has ever played Tribes. On each level, the player tries to find the correct sequence of flying, power-assisted running and other special moves needed to get from one room or one floating platform to the next.
An anime-inspired adventure
Gunvalkyrie has two flaws that keep it from getting an A rating. The first is that for all their special moves, there is no way to move the characters from side to side without changing their facing. This is particularly annoying on the interior levels, where the monsters like to wait just around a sharp corner. Commonly in an adventure game like this, characters would just sidestep so that they came around the corner ready to fire at the enemy. In GV, the closest the characters can come is to do a cartwheel in the direction desired, and then only when they are on the ground. Otherwise, they must run around the corner and turn to face the menace, hoping to dodge and shoot fast enough not to be barbecued.
The second flaw is worse. In some kind of silly holdover from the days of coin-operated arcade machines and video game consoles without hard drives, players can't save the game in the middle of a level. Only between them. This is very, very frustrating because it leads to a lot of duplicated
effort. Moving from one room to the next on a level always requires working the character through a series of perches. If players miss one landing, then they have to go back to the beginning of the sequence and start over. There is nothing wrong with requiring complicated sequences to advance through levels, but it is makework, not game play, to force players to do the sequences again and again by not allowing them to save their progress.
Lack of strafing and lack of saving to the side, GV is otherwise entertaining. The characters' guns "lock on" to the various targets when the character gets close enough and is facing in the right general direction. This allows the player to kill a lot of aliens without having to be a
deadeye marksman. The levels are challenging, but they aren't impossible. Powerups are frequent and the opponents are mixed and positioned so that they can be done in without having to perform ballet combinations of special moves. It is occasionally hard to figure out where to go next, and usually
complicated to get there, but it is never impossible.
As a fan of anime and steampunk, I really like the look and feel of this game. But the game could have taken better advantage of the entertaining mix of powered armor and tophats.
— Eric
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