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What would happen if you took a first-person shooter, a rogue-like, and a bullet-hell game and put ‘em in a blender? You’d probably get something like Mothergunship from Grip Digital, which serves a spiritual successor to their earlier game Tower of Guns. Mothergunship mixes this melding of genres with a number of homages to ‘90s action titles, and the game that results is an often clever action title built around some excellent trips through alien ships, shooting everything in your path while dodging thousands of projectiles.The game doesn’t waste time getting started. You’re immediately dropped into the power armor of a member of the Resistance, a group of tight-knit humans led by The Colonel (yes, most of the cast is a proper noun). Who are they resisting?
The MOTHERGUNSHIP tips and tricks below are spoiler-free. Use these tips (provided by the dev team!) to improve your crafting, combat, and survival.
The Mothergunship, who is leading an alien invasion of Earth. The main plot is pretty throwaway, to be honest. It’s most there to give you an excuse to get on alien ships and blow any hundreds of nasty robots.What the plot and characters do offer, however, is a way to poke fun at video game tropes and the cheesy voice acting and video game humor is both surprisingly self-aware – there’s a particularly annoying anthropomorphic frog who clearly there at the expense of Star Fox’s Slippy toad – and fairly funny, at least most of the time. Some jokes land better than others – I never like being told how much I suck after failing a mission, personally, and some of the video game humor is too cute for its own good – but The Colonel and the crew provide some entertaining background chatter as you murder your way across various aliens ships.'
The core gameplay loop is pretty simple. You choose either a story or side mission – story missions advance the plot, while side missions give you parts for crafting guns – then you’re dropped into a series of randomly generated rooms where you’ll fight through hordes of alien robots.' The core gameplay loop is pretty simple. You choose either a story or side mission – story missions advance the plot, while side missions give you parts for crafting guns – then you’re dropped into a series of randomly generated rooms where you’ll fight through hordes of alien robots, gaining experience that can be used to upgrade your power suit and cold hard cash that you can spend on gun parts – more on that later. Like any good rogue-like, this system means that no two levels are ever the same, which gives the game an air of excitement and replayability it wouldn’t otherwise have.There are some flaws with the game’s level design, however.
While the overall layout of a mission will never be the same, the layout of specific rooms never changes, which means things will start to look repetitive after a while. In addition, the levels only come in three visuals style, so things can get very familiar very quickly. The game compensates by making sure the order of the rooms is different every time, and that the contents of any individual room, from the enemies spawned within it to the rewards they’ll drop, change, too.There are also challenge rooms for you to enter, which feature special twists like a jump pad, a poisoned floor, or require you to survive for a certain amount of time, and offer enhanced rewards. The opportunity for more stuff is good because when you die – and you will, a lot – you’ll lose not only the items you chose to bring with you, but anything you may have found or purchased in that level, too, aside from experience. Die enough, and you might find yourself poorly equipped to attempt another run.
That’s when side missions start to look really appealing.' You can keep things simple and efficient by rolling with a modified machine gun that shoots really fast, but you can also do something insane, like making a twelve part gun that features a rocket launcher, a flamethrower, and a railgun. And did I mention you can dual-wield?' That’s where the ability to build your own utterly ridiculous weapons comes in.
Mothergunship runs at a very fast pace (think DOOM or Quake) and age-old techniques like strafing are essential, but you only start off with your absurdly powerful hydraulic fists and a triple jump (which can be upgraded up to 40 jumps because staying on the ground is for losers). It’s up to you to build your own weapons. You do this with parts, which can be carried into a level with you or purchased at in-mission stores with cash dropped by enemies.You have three core parts at your disposal: connecting parts allow you to mount other parts to them, modifiers alter the various aspects of your gun, and barrels determine what kind of gun it is. You can build and alter your guns at crafting stations mid-mission, and the level of freedom available is impressive.
You can keep things simple and efficient by rolling with a modified machine gun that shoots really fast, but you can also do something insane, like making a twelve part gun that features a rocket launcher, a flamethrower, and a railgun. And did I mention you can dual-wield? Imagine one of these bad boys – or one of your own creation – on each arm. Those robots don’t stand a chance.The best part is that, just when you think you can’t make your guns any more ridiculous, you’ll find a part or rotate a piece of the weapon in such a way that will allow you to add to it. This allows you to make some pretty absurd guns that add fun effects, like pushback or gravity, forcing you to switch up your movement styles. The catch is that the more parts you add to a gun, the more ammo it consumes to fire. You can’t run out of ammo in Mothergunship – it’s a renewable resource for each weapon that recharges fairly quickly – but there’s nothing worse than waiting for your gun to recharge while you’re being swarmed by enemies.'
Mothergunship’s sound design is great, but my game had a bug that prevented me from ever hearing all of it at once. Everything worked fine when I was standing still, but the audio started skipping badly whenever I moved.' If there’s one disappointing thing about the weapons system it’s that the game doesn’t give you many opportunities to experiment outside of your HQ’s firing range. You’ll learn what works together fairly quickly, but the urge to experiment inside a mission is small since the costs of dying are so high.
Another shortcoming is that missions can start to feel fairly samey after a while, despite Grip Digital’s clear attempts to keep things fresh. The endgame helps alleviate this, as it features a number of special missions that challenge you to run through them without dying, but it’s easy to become bored during long play sessions, especially if you’re having trouble progressing.The game also suffers from a number of bugs.
Enemies will sometimes get stuck in the environments, unable to move but perfectly able to attack. That, however, is a minor issue compared to the problems I had with the game’s audio. Mothergunship’s sound design is great, but my game had a bug that prevented me from ever hearing all of it at once.
Everything worked fine when I was standing still, but the audio started skipping badly whenever I moved. I managed to fix this by turning the effects volume off completely in the main menu, but that meant that I couldn’t hear sound effects from enemies, my character walking, or what it sounded like when things took damage. This error persists despite numerous efforts to correct it on my part, and as of this writing, it still hasn’t been patched.
It’s a huge flaw in an otherwise enjoying game.When Mothergunship is firing from both (or all) its barrels, it’s a very good time. The action is fast and enjoyable and the gun crafting system is an absolute joy to use.
Unfortunately, however, the game can be repetitive and frustrating in long stretches – this is especially true when you fail and lose good gun parts – and the bugs I experienced detracted from the game in meaningful ways. With some fixes, changes, and additional content, Mothergunship could be something special.
Right now, it’s merely competent. It’s a shame, too. There’s a great core here; it just needs a little love, and maybe a few extra parts.This game was reviewed on the PC.
Mothergunship is a first-person shooter roguelike that takes elements from each genre creating an incredibly satisfying experience.It has been awhile since I’ve played a good roguelike. The last time I remember really enjoying the procedurally generated gameplay the genre is known for was in 2015 when Brace Yourself Games launched its critically acclaimed game, Crypt of the Necrodancer; my absolute favorites include Rogue Legacy, The Binding of Isaac, and FTL: Faster Than Light.
Since then, there hasn’t been a roguelike that has caught my attention like those games. The gameplay was infectious, giving me the itch to play each of them for hours. Grip Digital’s (the creators of Tower of Guns) newest release, Mothergunship, scratches that same itch making it on the list of one of my favorite roguelikes. AdvertisementRoguelikes typically take gameplay elements from RPGs and Mothergunship does exemplify this to some extent.
However, its gameplay is more akin to a first-person shooter or a bullet hell shooter than an RPG. The shooting mechanics are similar to games like Doom or Quake promoting a run-and-gun mentality rather than taking cover. In fact, staying in one spot for too long will lead to your doom as the overwhelming amount of alien robots fire in your direction. It’s fast, frenetic, and you’ll rarely look back unless an enemy is on your tail.The gameplay in Mothergunship is not as great as the games that may have inspired it, but it does serve its purpose. Your character is very fast and mobile, always sprinting and with the ability to triple jump. There is a floatiness to jumping that feels like you’re always in control of the character’s body on the ground or in the air. The actual shooting does feel a bit off.
The speed of the projectiles are slower than what most may be accustom to; there were times where if I would move forward while shooting, I would be running right behind the projectile. Hitting a moving target from afar felt borderline impossible unless you really knew how to use whatever weapon you were using.The weapons you do use – which you’ll be dual-wielding for the majority of your time — will be created using the game’s gun crafting system. This system has a pretty simple set of rules. As long as the gun’s barrel is pointing forward and the components you use do not overlap each other, you can make whatever gun you want. If you want a gun that has a chaingun, rocket launcher, and grenade launcher, you can do that as long as it follows those rules.You will have to put energy consumption into account.
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Each component, except for connectors, will use a certain amount of energy per shot which is shown by a vertical blue bar on the left and right side of the screen each representing that side’s arm. The more components your gun has, the more energy it will extinguish; when you drain your energy to zero, you have to wait a few seconds for it to recharge which may mean the difference between life and death. That means making that chaingun/rocket launcher/ grenade launcher gun will only allow for a few shots before you expel all of your energy.The gun crafting system is also where the game’s RPG elements are featured the most. Similar to games like Destiny or World of Warcraft, the components you use will be color-coated indicating its quality; grey and blue colored components at a lower tier than purple and yellow colored components.
The quality of the barrel or the cap (the term used to describe attachments that give you statistical benefits) is intrinsic to completing the harder levels. Going into the Mothergunship with grey colored items is totally possible but will probably end in a death or take way more time than it’s worth.
AdvertisementHowever, you’ll want to make sure the ship you do decide to invade can be done with the equipment you have. When you die, everything you gathered in the ship, as well as the components you picked for your loadout, will disappear. I made the mistake of bringing in my best gear on a few missions that I thought would be easy and ended up losing it due to my carelessness. After I learned that lesson a few times, I started to bring in blue colored components more frequently to get the gist of the level. If I somehow made it through the ship, then I had nothing to worry about. If I didn’t, then I knew what to expect to some extent, brought in my good components and trod very carefully picking the fights I knew I could win.The gun crafting system is the number one reason to check this game out. It is a blast to see how different combinations synergize with each other.
My go-to combination, if possible, was to have a gun with both a rocket launcher and grenade launcher on the left hand and a powerful automatic weapon on my main hand. Because that wasn’t always a possibility — whether because I couldn’t fit it in my loadout or the shops scattered throughout the ship didn’t have it available — I was forced to try different weapon combinations which is great. I liked experimenting with what was given to me attempting to make it work for whatever situation I was in.
If the game didn’t force me to try new things out, I would have never found that go-to weapon combination.“The gun crafting system is the number one reason to check this game out.”The ships you’ll travel through are made up of several rooms. Each ship’s layout will be different from the last frequently changing things up throughout the campaign. There are several different room types that help further level variety by giving you timed challenges or give a room a random trait that may be beneficial or a detriment to your run.While the rooms are procedurally generated, I couldn’t help but feel that certain rooms had a specific set of ground rules for its enemy layout and only received minor changes – which didn’t deviate too much since there are few enemy types — as the game got more difficult.
I don’t think it makes the game less interesting by any means; if anything, it allows me to decide if it is worth defeating every robot in the room or just move on to the next room – yes, you can just skip rooms entirely if you can find an exit. However, it does get fairly repetitive. It may be different for others since it is procedurally generated but I ran into a few select rooms dozens of times with similar enemy layouts.“Mothergunship is worth seeing through once but I’m sure you’ll want to tackle the campaign at least one more time.”This risk/reward system is what makes this game really enjoyable. Get past a some of these levels are really difficult and you don’t really know what to expect until you walk into the room.
There is so much happening on the screen at once when you do actually make it out alive in those situations the feeling of relief is both satisfying and rewarding.There is a reason I haven’t really talked about the story. It is forgettable. The character dialogue is pretty cringy at times and the story it is attempting to tell is one-note. There is a pretty cool twist at the end but it isn’t anything you’ll jump out of your seat for. After you do complete the campaign, there is an explanation given in the story for why you can play beyond that point and it’s one of the better executions I’ve seen.
At the end of the day, the actual story is irrelevant. The focus of the game is its gameplay and the gun crafting system; in those categories, it absolutely shines.Mothergunship has its problems.
The repetitive environments and enemy types, long load times, and forgettable dialogue are its most unlikeable attributes. Luckily, its diverse gameplay, fun and frenetic shooting, and deep gun crafting make Grip Digital’s latest enjoyable and replayable.
Mothergunship is worth seeing through once but I’m sure you’ll want to tackle the campaign at least one more time.
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