Gunhead is a game about shooting things while piloting a mech-suit with a gun on its head. Nothing more, nothing less. I’ve got a lot of time for that sort of upfront honesty.
In addition to the above, Gunhead is the follow up to Cryptark, a really cool side-scroller about ransacking boobytrapped old spaceships. I don’t plan on comparing them much, though, because I’ve not played the first game in ages and none of us are here for that anyway.
We’re here, Dear Reader, to talk about Gunhead, a first-person shooter that, thanks to its cel-shaded style, has been likened to Borderlands. Put another way: it looks great. Some of the background ship textures are on the drab side, it’s not perfect after all, but the focus has been put where I would always want it: cool enemy designs and vibrant weapon effects, backed up by impactful first-person combat.
Gunhead casts you as a mech pilot whose job it is to head into old, abandoned spaceships in search of high-value tech. The problem is these old derelicts are filled with angry traps armed with guns and spikey bits. You do this hazardous work at the behest of a shady corporate alien dude who is never satisfied with your efforts, frankly. You’ve got a crew who are there to help, but really it’s all down to you to plan your mission and then execute it.
Preparing for the perfect looting spree
The planning takes place on your ship, a largely static location where you can see your upgrades, change the difficulty settings, and admire past glories on the trophy wall. There’s also a projection of the map so you can take a closer look at the task at hand. By the time you get to the later stages of a run, the ships are complicated and require careful consideration before you tackle them. You’ll have to take a long and considered look at the various challenges that await.
Once you’ve done your homework, it’s time to prep your mech. There are weapon pick-ups and upgrades to grab as you explore the game. Once you’ve found a weapon during a mission, and then unlocked the weapon back at base, you’ll be able to use it for future runs. I enjoyed filling my inventory with different guns, and trying out new weapon combos is probably my favourite part of the game.
You can’t do much about any of the health that you’ve lost previously. In fact, a couple of upgrades aside, recovering lost health is nearly always done at certain stations mid-mission, which can be frustrating when you’re back at base and you’ve got to go out again with just a sliver of health. In those instances, you’ll need to scan the map and make recovering some health points your next priority. (Update 1.4 fixes this issue with an onboard Mech Repair Station.)
Gunhead is as simple and as hard as executing the plan you devised before heading out. At first things are nice and easy, but later on there are some serious security wrinkles that take proper planning to overcome. Systems interlink and require coordinated planning. There are a variety of challenging gauntlets to run on the way through a typical campaign, including some bloody great big bosses.
The roguelite aspect means that there’s a progress reset when you die, so staying alive by maintaining your mech has to be the priority in any run. I spent my time on the lookout for health stations and new weapon pickups, to keep myself healthy and try out some new guns. Just as you would expect from any roguelite, once you’ve got the hang of the basics, those first couple of rounds become about looting cool items and creating an interesting build that can stand up to the trials ahead.
The mech with a gun for a head
While things back at base weren’t as interactive as I would have liked, it’s a different matter once you’ve left the confines of your ship. I loved the sense of freedom I had when piloting my mech; it’s lighter and more responsive than I’ve experienced in many other mecha games.
The jetpacks on the back of your first and main suit – the titular Gunhead – let you blast around the place in double-quick time, using your momentum in battle to get improved line of sight on your opponents. I can see people using their boosters to great effect when exploring and even speedrunning the more complicated space wrecks.
You can also spend your hard-earned money on new mech suits. I wasn’t prepared for just how much of an effect changing your suit would have, but each one creates a different gameplay dynamic. My first change was to wear the Master Chief-inspired Rook suit, which lets you quintuple jump about the place rather than boost around with the constant jetpack offered by the squishier Archangel suit. I’ve not unlocked them all yet, but the ones I’ve tried completely changed the feel of the game. Instead of boosting up to the farthest corners of a room, a less mobile but more robust suit will have you looking at the scenery and planning how you’re going to hop from A to B.
I mentioned the weaponry of the game within the context of the roguelite meta progression, but the more satisfying application of Gunhead’s arsenal comes in combat. You’ve got four potential hardpoints to fill and they’re mapped to the triggers of your controller. This four-slot system gives you a great amount of tactical variety, and it only gets better as you unlock more items.
You can pick your guns for a new run by spending your past earnings. The other option is just winging each new attempt, and grabbing whatever items are lying about the place. There’s something quite exciting about doing this, because thanks to the procedurally generated level creation – which is pretty damn solid I might add – you can never know what you’re going to encounter next.
It can be punishing and relentless, and you constantly need to have your wits about you as you explore. The extra objectives for each level add further friction to each journey, if pursued. The ultimate goal, however, is to get to the big brain at the end of each level. Once you’ve got there, and its shields are down, and you’ve scorched it beyond repair, the level is over and you’re immediately chucked back to base, so you can pick a new mission and start the process over.
Captain’s blog
To sum up: after several hours with Gunhead across the demo and now the release version, I have to say that I’m pretty pleased with the way things have turned out so far. There’s more to come, too, as during our recent interview with Alientrap the studio confirmed that it is planning on supporting the game with post-launch content. It’s exciting to think about what the future might hold, if the game can build the audience I think it deserves.
My favourite thing about Gunhead is the way it balances gung-ho gameplay with a bit of good ol’ strategic thinking. Once you get into the later levels of a run, there are a lot of different interlocking systems to consider. I was constantly having to balance caution with controlled aggression to get through to the later rounds and into the ring with the game’s bosses. These are challenging and I lost more of these encounters than I won.
Gunhead’s blend of strategy and action-packed gunplay makes for a good time. There is an impressive selection of weapons and mech suits to mix and match, ensuring that you can put together a loadout that feels unique for each new run.
The bit in-between the shooting and looting is fine and certainly serves the action well enough, but I thought that home base could have been a bit more dynamic. Maybe that will come from future updates, based on how the community interacts with the game. It’s not a major problem for me, though, because I’m here for combat and big guns and Gunhead delivers both in spades.
Gunhead is out on PC Steam and PlayStation 5 on November 8. We reviewed the game on PC using a code provided by the developer.
