A brilliantly composed arcade-shooter, with intuitive controls and just the right amount of strategy involved to complete.

One of the main problems with arcade-shooters from 'back in the days', was/is that they thrived off of eating up all your weekly allowances. Games were made to be tough as nails, in order to cram as much play-time into as small a game as possible.

Arcade-games were a standard of sorts, not only for the arcades, but also for a wide range of computer and console -games, that kids could 'enjoy at home' (bring the arcade-experience to your living-room) and thus we had to spend weeks learning to memorize patterns and figuring out ways to take advantage of the games (and sometimes hardware), in order to actually beat the games that we bought.

Of course there were exceptions to this, but these were mainly the 'adventure/rpg' genre of games, that which allowed us to actually [save] our game-states and continue playing at another time.

But most games that came out in the 80s to mid 90s were more or less constructed in a way that you would spend as much time learning to play it, as possible, thus giving you a sensation of 'getting value' for your money and getting the highest scores possible was your reward (or actually completing the game and getting a single screen's worth of 'Congratulations, you beat game X')

Gunstar follows a very familiar formula, in that it is an arcade -like experience; You fly across a vast map (several, in fact) and shoot down enemies, in order to gain points. Apart from that, there are various power-ups to gather and help you on your mission.

But what sets Gunstar apart from its 'peers' (if you will), is not only the satisfying amount of strategies involved such as holding down the fire-button, gives off a recoil, making you back up, ever so slightly - thus being a key strategy to learn, in order to avoid getting shot at by your enemies, asteroids that contain 'gems' which when you have gathered enough will upgrade your ship, allies who will help you on your mission, but only if [they] themselves are under attack and if *you* attack them, then they will go after you, rather than your opponents and so on and so forth; But to top that all off, after every fourth 'map' the game will actually *save* your progress, thus allowing you to quit and pick up where you left off, at your convenience.

The controls are (as mentioned) intuitive and very sleek, in that you only ever need to use your mouse to control your ship, one button to thrust forward, one to fire (moving the mouse to steer).

The graphics are excellent, with very vibrant colors, much in the vein of previous titles from the same developer (all which I highly recommend). The ship, once upgraded, will grow bigger and feel more hefty and serious and the landscapes, although using similar models will, much due to the color-shifting of each level, feel pretty unique in their own way. The fact that you are almost always 'blazing across', makes up for this very well.

The music, although at risk of getting a bit repetitive after a while, fits the game perfectly and unless you play for hours on end, I don't see the risk of getting 'tired' of it.

The enemies have a very nice variety and the difficulty is nicely progressed throughout the game (there are of course various degrees [of] difficulty to pick between at the start of the game)

The 'Communication-system', with NPCs showing up in the bottom-left of your screen is a touch of brilliance and adds so much flavor to the game; There are some genuinely funny quips to be listened to and even though a lot of them repeat, it (once again) does not feel 'repetitive', due to the nature of the dialogue and fast-paced game-play.

There are a nice variety [of] NPCs at display and the way that they 'rotate' (left-to-right and back again) is a very nice touch, adding a lot to the overall 'feel' of the 'Intercom'.

The game has a brilliant atmosphere about it and it genuinely feels like it has been thought through and not just 'mashed some OldSkool games together'. There is coherency in the 'story' and varied enough game-play -mechanics/strategy that you'll want to play it to the end (and then some).

TL;DR

Atmospheric game with clever mechanics/intuitive controls, smooth graphics and a neat soundtrack. The ability to upgrade your space-ship and the option to save your game makes it that much more fun to play in the long run. Fun dialogue and engaging characters breathe life into what otherwise is a simple enough premise.