GunMetal Xbox Review - with Hints and Tips

GunMetal for Xbox on wikipedia

"I've got a few minutes, let me kill some things"

I recently picked up GunMetal for the Xbox. A nice simple 3D Shooter. It received very mixed reviews but I watched a gameplay video for it on YouTube and I was sold.

It doesn't appear on the 360 compatibility list so you'll need an original Xbox to play it.

I don't normally play mech games, they tend to have fairly complicated controls and setup. But not this. This games seems to have been designed for my simple "I've got a few minutes, let me kill some things" gameplay preferences.

I loved the lack of tutorial. Basically, you start, you kill things. You learn as you go. No first level tutorial hand holding.

Plot: you are a giant mech suited person (so don't stand on any of the little humans you are supposed to protect). And you can transform into a plane. In each mode you have rockets and a selection of weapons.

You are more vulnerable as a plane (because you have no shield) but you have rockets in each mode so when you run out as a mech, switch to plane and you'll have some more.

You are given a series of missions, the mission overview is provided during the mission load so you don't feel like you are hanging around waiting for stuff to happen.

The first mission is pretty easy, but then with each successive mission it gets a little harder with some new enemies that you have to figure out a new strategy to deal with each.

Within the constraints of the mission parameters you are pretty much free to do as you want.

I experienced the occasional glitch, where the mission didn't move on to the next stage because I'd managed to be out of range of the in-game event trigger. But that all worked in my favour because I had time to heal and pick up more missiles.

The missions are pretty short, but I had to replay most a few times because I'd do something stupid and die, or I hadn't worked out the patterns of the enemies, or I wasn't watching the radar properly. So, my fault, but I had to play them until I passed them.

A good fun blaster.

I could only find one walkthrough and it was incomplete.

• http://www.gamefaqs.com/xbox/516236-gun-metal/faqs/18652

Links:

• MetaCritic Reviews
• Wikipedia Entry
• Some cheats I didn't try out
• Helpful video showing mission 03
• A set of playthrough videos that might be useful (video 1) 
• video 2 - protection, leviathan, infiltration
• video 3 - infiltration, fortification, Minesweeper 
• video 4 - Minesweeper, Face Off, Payback
• video 5 - Payback, Hit And Run
• video 6 - Hit and Run, gateway, salvation
• video 7 - salvation

Hints:

• Don't Panic. Fly away.
• Pull back on the right stick in plane mode to fly slow enough to hit things. But accelerate and barrel role so they don't hit you back.
• Remember to shift between weapons in the plane mode as well with 'A' or the 4 way pad.
• Use the options to invert the right stick so you can shoot properly. Try the game with the left stick inverted in case that works for you.
• You can tranform from plane to mech and land on some of the enemies, then shoot them while standing on top of them, or shoot their wingmen.
• In mission 3, the escort, fly ahead, kill things, come back make sure they are OK. Fly away, heal and re-arm. I did attack the end baddies early with missiles, because I knew I had more I could reload.
• In mission 4: Protection - fly between the towers and kill the incoming ships with missiles and machine gun, then convert to robot and defend the charger. Use missiles and disks.
• In mission 5: Vanguard - take out the tanks on the ground with your torpedoes, then return for the enemy carrier ships and use the disks and torpedoes from the ground. Then the new tanks. Then go in the air with missiles and machine guns on the bombers.
• When you die, learn, then come back and try a new strategy.
• In mission 6: Leviathan - choose mini rockets, fly over to the cruiser, land on it, take out the two mini-guns on top, then use disks to destroy the two side arms and the back engine. Then fly off and shoot things until the shield on the cruiser falls, then take out the front, and keep coming back to shoot it down, wait for missile locks and avoid the gun on the bottom. Then when it is dead, come back and shoot the other enemies and save the city.
• In mission 7: infiltration - fly to the radar sites and missile and rocket them. Kill each ship sent to investigate from the ground with disks. Don't reload until all radar is finished. Sneak up on the base on foot and kill outlying towers with the assault rifle, sneaking behing hills fof prtection. Kill the mothership by landing on it, just make sure you fly off when it explodes. Then take out the rest at your leisure safely.
• In mission 8: fortification - a surprisingly easy mission, shoot stuff with rockets. Jump on the back of a mothership and take it out. Then fly off and kill the remaining small ships.
• In mission 9: Minesweeper - run around and clear as many mines as you can, follow the main path, then branch off and clear out team 2's, then watch as the blue squares get close to the mines and fly off and save them. Remember not to fly high otherwise the giant lasers get you. Since the baddies at the base don't arrive until your salvage ships do, you should try and save all 3. Don't kill anything at the base until you clear the mines. Then enter the base and take out the two ships on the ground with the plane missiles and mavericks. Then you can pretty much take out everything from the ground with missiles, rockets and assault canon - concentrate on the ships which land first, then take out the flying crafts. You don't need to save all your ships to survive, but the more you save the longer time you have to wipe out the enemies. Took me a fair few tries to complete this level and find the best route for wiping out the mines. Try and clear the mines without taking damage because you'll need all your health for the base.
• In mission 10: Face Off - land on the enemy carrier and blow apart the top. Then leave carrier and stay as walking mech, then take out everything on the bottom and fire missiles up into the carrier, keep shooting at the carrier till it explodes.
• In mission 11: Payback - wait until you have been attacked by incoming flying guys, then take out each base. After each base, fly back and defend the energizer.
• In mission 12 : Hit and Run - this was annoying, each valley requires a slightly different strategy, and every time I played through I made a stupid mistake and died. The best order for me was Valley 2, then 3, then 4, then 1. Leaving valley 1 to the end means your energizer does not get attacked and you don't have to take out all the bases. 
• Valley 1 - just fly to the end, kill the missile, come back, regenerate and save your base from being attacked. (this doesn't always happen - depends if you kill the bases or not). 
• Valley 2, fly low and go to the end to kill the missile - fairly easy, just fly low, don't use the photon storm or you'll explode mines and take damage. 
• Valley 3 has a lot of missiles, so be wary of one flying off. You get plenty of missiles on this level so don't worry about running out. Use your trident on the ground. Try not to shoot the missiles in their silo ditches otherwise you will be hurt by the explosions. 
• Valley 4, fly to the end, kill the missile, then fly back beyond the mother ship and hide behind the hills on foot and take it out with missiles without being hit.
• In mission 13 - Gateway - take out the guns on the hills with your harpoons. You have more time than you think on this level.Take out the bases on either side. Then take out the supporting generators. Then take out the inner generators. I dropped down to mech when killing the bases, then switched to plane to fly away and come back fast. When dealing with the inner generators I was in the plane using missles mainly. When it says "get out of there" just fly away as fast as you can.
• In mission 14 - salvation - my tactic for this was to fly at each of the large ships from behind firing missiles and photon storms. Then land on the ship and blast it with missiles and trident. then walk out from under each ship after it exploded. This caused very few enemies to land and cause trouble. Just make sure you don't fall off under the big ships with the underside guns, otherwise you die quickly.

Armed and Dangerous Xbox Review

"A good old fashioned challenging shooter, with FMV cut scenes that I actually wanted to watch."

I just finished playing through Armed and Dangerous on the Xbox.

A good old fashioned challenging shooter, with FMV cut scenes that I actually wanted to watch.

The levels are fairly short, some you can run through in 10 minutes, others half an hour or so. But some of them will take quite a few tries to actually complete.

Save points are represented by pubs where you can also pick up new weapons and load up on more ammo. You will also deplete the pub health if you wander in close to death. I don't know what happens if you do actually deplete the pub health, I never tried.

I normally skip FMV in modern games as it takes up too much of my time and adds no value. In Armed and Dangerous it is actually funny and I sat through it without complaint. I was actually annoyed at myself as I missed a couple of cut scenes by accidentally pressing start - I had to jump back to the options menu to watch them.

Some of the reviews suggest that the graphics aren't very good. I thought they were just fine and I had no problems with them and thought the whole game hung together well. I didn't encounter any gameplay bugs.

• metacritic reviews
• ign review

There were a few levels where I did have to consult this walkthrough, because they were annoyingly impossible. But most of the levels you can work through quite happily on your own.

You can gain an idea of the gameplay from youtube.

If you want an idea of the cut scenes then you can find those on YouTube, but I wouldn't watch it all as allowing them to creep up on you after completing a level provides a reassuringly silly form of validation.

You can pick up Armed and Dangerous on Amazon and Ebay pretty cheaply, I encourage you to do so.

Hints:

• Use the options to invert the controls
• If you see one of the hexagonal buildings, kill it, since it is a grunt garrison and they respawn
• Take the side paths when you see them
• Don't worry about your companions dying - they come back on the next level
• Use the rocket launcher to spot enemies in the distance, and take them out early
• When you find a gun emplacement, use it to shoot out the distance and try and take out a lot of later enemies early.
• If a sniper starts shooting at you when you are in a gun emplacement, get out quick and either kill them, or stop using the gun.
• If you have already saved at a pub and healed there, try not to wander back in on low health. All that will happen is that you save the game on a low health - far better to restart at the last save.
• Don't panic. You can usually clear the level by working through meticulously.
• Strafe frequently, you can avoid a lot of shots that way.
• If you run low on health and don't think, you can go forwards, try backtracking - you might find some health power-ups lying around. But you might also find some grunts coming in from the rear that you can kill and pick up health from them.
• Do walk around the back of buildings as you can find the tokens and rocket power ups that way.
• Surprisingly the tall towers and flying things don't need big weapons to kill them, sometimes the machine gun is a perfect weapon to use on them.
• If the grunts are in gun emplacements pointing away from you, ignore them. They won't come out, and they can't kill you. But you might be able to come back later and kill them for a much needed health pack.
• If you have the choice between rockets and sniper rifle, take the rockets because they will zoom in on snipers faster than you trying to shoot them.
• On the last level, the pub closest to the final bosses runs out of ammo pretty fast, so when you have the jetpack, just jump/fly back to the previous pub which doesn't run out of ammo.
• Use the secondary weapon often.