Mothergunship - Xbox One

Bullet hell games, we love'em don't we? Right? RIGHT? Well we do when they are lefty-righty or up and downey 2D games. But what if you put that same mechanic and put it into an FPS game? Yes, the concept seems profoundly wrong, but there's something kind of brilliant about Mothergunship's approach to it.

Aliens have invaded Earth and it is up to you, a lowly tree-frog, to eliminate these beings by dodging their ever so slow moving bullets as they fire hundreds of them at you and hardly any speed at all. But there are loads of them. Yes, you play as a tree-frog. Let that sink in. You're getting an idea of the tone of Mo

There are two key aspects of Mothergunship that make it quite notable. Yes, there are the first-person shooting mechanics with enemies filling the screen with exceptionally slow moving projectiles. Seriously, your character can actually outrun them in most instances.

But there is also a crafting mechanic. Mothergunship delves into the realms of survival building games by allowing players to build their own weapons. This builds on the concept of upgrades for ship abilities and weapons in games like Gradius and R-Type. The difference here is that the form of the weapons is entirely up the player.

But there is a cost to building extravagant weapons. For every barrel and rocket launcher you install, more energy is spent. It is therefore possible to make a weapon array that wraps around the entire perimeter of the screen, but you can only fire it once every 30 second as it takes that long to recharge! It's a great idea that forces the player to balance damage vs fire rate.

Mothergunship really is it's own beast, and that beast might or might not be a tree-frog. more