It may miss a trick with the integration of its gun creation, but with its sheer amount of content, refined gunplay, dynamism in freedom of movement, and entertaining story, it's a recommendation.

What're ya Resi 4ing?

Mothergunship is at its best when you're platform trampolining across the expanse of a room so filled with enemies that it looks like Brownian motion. Hammering space for your quadragintuple jump in the air, you rain fire from two twenty-part gun extravaganzas, weaving round Bullet Bills straight from Mario as you do. The sheer dynamism of the game, from the near unlimited jumps, Superman pace and trampoline platforms tossing you to and fro across the room, is competitive with the best of the classic FPS genre and its recent anti-hitscan resurgence.

Admittedly, that's often not what Mothergunship is. As a mission to mission robot killing roguelike with meta progression, you are ultimately at the mercy of the dreaded dice roll and the 'balancing the scales' constrictions imposed on it all.

The heavily marketed USP of its gun construction is an ultra-exciting one... with caveats. Creations are per mission/side mission, so are constricted by what you're able to bring in (likely only four pieces) and expand on in randomly available (according to the room) and stocked shopping stations. Not all of the gun barrels come equal. I for one found most all of the barrel permutations fun and effectual, but there's no denying the easier ride that comes with a machine gun-heavy config. You might forgo gun extravagance, even given the chance, for stat modifying caps alongside a single barrel instead. Especially since even the smallest of gun extravaganza configs will chew through your power meters, that stand in place of ammo, in mere seconds. To top it off, cosmic fate will have you happy with a config just as you reach the end of a ship's rooms and you'll be forced to wave it goodbye. At least you can keep the parts.

Shoots for 0.1 seconds. Not so impressive now.

It's all so surface level an exploration of something they have on a platter to integrate well. I wonder if a different approach to its roguelike mission structure could have seated their gun creation better. Levels could have interacted (small campaigns?) and allowed you to take former creations with you. Big creations could be uninhibited by power levels (adding to the power fantasy) and instead be regulated by the already inhibiting setup of periodic shopping stations. Remove the cap of inventory size and make the collection of components a larger part of the metagame. Your gun config could be assigned a power level that allows access to certain difficulty level missions. I think all this would go some way to set the guns as free as the movement. There was huge potential here to form an attachment with your creations, rather than have them rubbed out each time. As it is, you only get to explore the limits of the feature in optional endless and sandbox missions, when really the bulk of the game should be taking advantage.

Coming from their spiritual predecessor Tower of Guns and not being a fan of it, I was bowled over by the all-around step up in presentation on my first play of the demo. I've continued to be in the full game. The fidelity and lighting, the music, gun sounds - the voice acting even! The ongoing conversations confined to head chatter hold enough character to carry the game through with some much-needed personality. Jokes come fast and land consistently. You'll come to actually like and miss the characters after it all kind of tails off at the end. It goes a long way to rendering the gunplay more palatable. Where the same kind of turrets, drones and walkers made for a lonely, disconnected feeling in ToG, the context here makes clearing rooms feel like saving the world.

The TurretWall 6000 is less advanced than the 9000 but just as fun

I adore some of the level design here. There's a big focus on expansive, but quick to traverse levels here. Like the recent Doom 2016, you are the king of your environment, zooming around playing crowd control with the enemies. Some rooms have trampolines launching you repeatedly side to side or up and down, so you're constantly aerial. Some launch you up multiple levels and shoot you into parallel areas. The rooms are all bolstered by having multiple exits to choose from, some coded for extra challenge (and rewards), be it surviving without shooting for a time.

The game is no pushover. I died endlessly on one of the final story missions. Since, in particularly cruel roguelike fashion, you lose all the gun components you bring in with you, retrying the level would then become a two-part process of playing a side mission to gain back some barrels, connectors, and caps to have any chance of success. I do wonder if the main block to progress came from specific problem rooms randomly flicked into the deck more than anything else. One room, in particular, is the absolute devil. Like the gun barrel types, there is definitely some unevenness here in the areas and their enemies. This, especially, when the final mission and its boss (as well as the other bosses of which there are unfortunately only two) are the pipsiest to beat. It makes for a very abrupt end to be unchallenged after so many hours of play - complete with joke ending.

Your local gym has changed since you last visited

If there's one thing I don't understand (and didn't realise even existed until very recently), it's skipping rooms by running from escape door to escape door. Entire missions can be skipped this way - even nightmare side missions, the supposed worst of the worst. Of course, this way you miss out on the inherent rewards of coins for weapon components and meta-currency for upgrading your character suit's health, number of jumps and movement speed. This doesn't seem harsh enough a deterrent. Maybe I'm being too much of a purist, but wouldn't it make more sense to allow escape from difficult rooms this way, but to force a repeat of the same room number of the mission so that no progress can be made without clearing rooms? The issue is, it's not even difficult to skip rooms entirely unscathed. If this was a concession so as to assuage frustration, I understand somewhat. People who want to play the game are free to play the game after all. Perhaps I just wish I had known I could have easily become unstuck myself if I had known.

Ultimately, I appreciate how great a base game platform Mothergunship is to enhance from here on out. With co-op already in the alpha branch and promises of future campaigns and gun components, it might be wrong to hope for future content to launch itself way and above that platform and fill some of the voids present here, but that won't stop me from hoping. Indeed, the final act of the game is to unveil endless replayability at you to with promised added challenge. With so many mission types and modes already, you're nothing if not well provided for if you enjoy the gameplay loop as much as I did. Mothergunship may miss a trick with the integration of its incredible gun creation, but with its sheer amount of content, refined gunplay, dynamism in freedom of movement, and surprisingly entertaining story, it's an obvious recommendation.