Beat on Normal as free from xbox gold. It was surprising that it was not free to keep since it was for the original xbox. This game was comedy gold, with hilarious dialogue, story and characters. Good old UK humor, and some excellent Celtic music. The gameplay was fun. At first I tried to hang back in cover, zoom in and manually aim, but the proper way to play was to strafe and let the aim assist do most of the work. All enemy projectiles could be dodged, which was why moving was so good. I found the 2 companions to be of little use though because they did not dodge and thus tended to die. I told them to stand guard while I soloed everything. Sometimes I had them move up to cover my rear because enemies seemed to occasionally spawn from no where, and especially to prevent enemies from getting back on turrets. Some levels had alarms that caused infinite enemy spawns from all directions, which forced aggressive tactics to destroy it. Most levels had bunkers that spawned enemies but I was not sure if it was infinite or not. Either way I destroyed them with grenades. The regular enemies were not much threat and did minimal damage if I failed to dodge. Of those, the assault rifle + grenades guys were the most dangerous. Later there were jet pack guys, snipers, and rocket launcher guys. The 1st time I died was to the gun turrets, because they actually did significant damage and their explosive splash damage was difficult to avoid. They were best killed with heavy weapons while the big robot enemies could only be harmed with explosives.

My ideal weapons set up was; assault rifle (lots of ammo for mowing down mooks while having decent range), sniper rifle (even though the ammo count was abysmal) and rocket launcher for auto homing long range big damage. The basic rifle had infinite ammo and a little better range than the AR, but I did not find either to be necessary. The grenade launcher was a solid heavy weapon but lacked the range and auto aim of rockets. The shark launcher was very unexpected and did not fit in with the other weapons; it created an actual shark that swam through the ground to eat enemies. Hilarious, and a good way to take out gun turrets. Sticky grenades were useful for destroying things that bullets could not damage, though I almost never used them against regular enemies. The other grenades were of dubious use. Never tried the punch one or upside down one, the black hole didn't seem that effective, and the traitor was fun at the end of the penultimate level where I made the giant robots kill each other.

Enemies seemed to randomly drop health and ammo, and both allies and enemies could use health packs (though I don't think they did any pathing to get the healing). I liked how ammo pickups went directly into the current clip so I could use them tactically to avoid having to reload. Health was more important as I needed a constant supply to stay alive despite how incompetent the enemies were. The robot ally could brew tea that restored health, which I believe he only did when the player was severely wounded. No idea if there were any limits on that but it was great incentive to keep him alive. Taverns had a stockpile of health, restored ammo, stored excess guns, and saved the game, so securing them was of critical importance. It was a great compromise between checkpoint saves and manual save any time; often times I backtracked to save when the enemies were dangerous. Most levels were straightforward linear affairs while others were more open ended and required destroying certain targets or rescuing civilians. A couple had generous time limits. Some featured a jetpack and basic platforming. Then there were base defense shooting gallery levels, which included the final level. It was a little disappointing that there were no boss fights. The base defense levels showcased the absolutely ludicrous amount of troops the bad guys had, and were not difficult. I failed the final level a few times, not because I let too many enemies through but because I died from getting shot (since there was no moving). I beat it by stopping zooming in so the auto aim took effect, sweeping around more to get the few that stood still to shoot me, and getting the health dropped from planes. It was weird how there were planes here but nowhere else in the game. At first I thought they were enemy bombers and shot at them, but they just dropped supplies. The enemy actually used zeppelins but not in the shooting gallery levels for some reason. I failed the zeppelin level many times; the one where I had to defend a town from troops paradropped in from those zeppelins. I did see the machine gun turrets and knew how easily they shot down the air ships but for some reason I kept trying to get then with the AR and killing the troops. A look online said to camp near the tavern to abuse it for infinite rockets and use the nearby machine gun. The level was ridiculously easy that way. I did find about half of the collectibles and had access to 2 bonus missions. 1 was defending a house against huge numbers of enemies. I tried it once and failed; not my idea of a good level. The gauntlet level was a mostly open arena with huge amounts of enemies. I could not survive very long and only tried a couple of times. There was a jetpack that I did not make it to. The only way I can see to beat that would be to find or carve out a safe spot, then methodically take out the rest.

This was a fun shooter with good mechanics and a bonkers atmosphere that made for numerous laugh out loud moments. The level objectives did get a little repetitive though and could have used greater variety. In particular there were too many rescue, destroy houses and shooting gallery missions. I could see playing again on higher difficultly and possibly even without aim assist.

8.0/10