1) It's all rendered in lovely crisp 3D

2) Your helicopter can spin through 360 degrees

3) Collecting green crystals builds up your super weapon (smart bomb), rather than you having the standard 3 smart bombs from the very off.

These things aside, the game is what you'd expect of a Psikyo developed vertical shooter, i.e. lots of killing, nice clear graphics, 3 levels of power-up and dodgy music ;)


Gameplay.....

Right then, if you've played any of Pskiyo's previous vertical shooters (especially the Strikers and Gunbird series') you'll feel very much at home for the first few minutes. That is until you realise that you can spin your helicopter (yes they must finally have got bored of planes and witches) through 360 degrees.

At first this may seem rather gimmicky and a bit pointless (I certainly thought so), however, you'll soon cotton on to the fact that all of the levels have been specifically designed with this feature in mind and soon you'll wonder why all vertical shooters don't do this. To execute this rather daring aeronautical feat you have to hold down the X or B button and move the D-Pad around, spinning you around a fixed point. Letting go of either button then allows you to move around normally, firing in whichever direction you left your helicopter pointing. Sure it takes a bit of getting used to but once you have you'll be shooting away with a big grin on your face. Why the grin? Well largely because the comprehension dawns that you can shoot enemies coming up behind you without having to wait for them to fly past you. Also this opens up a whole new world of vantage points from which to pepper the gigantic lumbering bosses with laser/missile/machine gun death.

"Gigantic Lumbering bosses you say?" Oh yes, Zero Gunner's bosses are some of the most impressive in any shooter. The 3D aspect lends the game a fantastic sense of scale, and you really get the impression that these things are huge mechanical behemoths, which obviously makes it that much more satisfying when you destroy the fecker without dying. Add to this that each boss has 2 forms (e.g. the 'Alpine Armoured Train' level boss starts off as a train carriage loaded with gun emplacements; when this is destroyed a huge robot thing emerges from inside the carriage and jumps out hovering around and firing all kinds of crap at you) and is beautifully detailed and animated, and you're in for a real treat at the close of each stage.

Aside from the whole spinning around thing Zero Gunner 2 has some other great, if subtle, gameplay features. Firstly, collision with enemies doesn't kill you, rather it results in you bouncing away a tiny distance - very handy. Also, as mentioned briefly above, to gain a smart bomb, you have to collect the little green crystals that appear when you destroy an enemy, these power up a gauge at the side of the screen. You can deploy your smart bomb at any time, however the higher up the gauge the better the bomb. "Fair enough" you might think "nothing special about that", ah well even the small enemies release quite a few of these crystals and they start to disperse around the screen meaning you have to fly all over the place to collect them all (and you will need a LOT of them to get your Smart bomb up to full pelt). However, if you stop firing, they all fly towards you (as do the power up tokens) so you have a tricky decision to make between staying in a good vantage point and not shooting for a few seconds or flying all over the place to collect them. Either way you increase the risk of getting shot. Mmmmm tactical.

When you do get your smart bomb to maximum you'll be pleasantly surprised to see a load of little planes coming to your aid, following you around and shooting at whatever you're shooting at. Which is lovely.

Thirdly (and finally), the levels don't play out in any specific order, they vary depending on which one of the 3 helicopters you choose but also vary each time you start the game. The levels, therefore, have a dynamic difficulty level depending on the order they are played in, this is very typical of Psikyo and can be seen in Gunbird for example. You'll be pleased to know that the learning curve is also nice and smooth too so this game is great for the less talented shooter (like me).

The Visuals.....

Well until I played Ikaruga and Border Down, this was the best looking shooter I had ever seen on a console. It's all rendered in 3D and the models and textures are really nice. The game is dotted with very vibrant colours and some of the levels backgrounds are fantastic (in particular the 'Alpine Armoured Train' level's beautiful snow covered mountains). Everything runs beautifully smoothly; it's a real joy to behold, well done Psikyo, top notch.

Music.........

Well, i'm not going to lie to you, the music in this game is bad. If you've read any of my other reviews you may well have gathered by now that i'm a musical snob, and if there's one thing I can't stand it's badly sampled electric guitars (yes you guessed it, i'm a guitarist too). Unfortunately, each track has badly sampled electric guitars in it......bollocks. Mind you, it's not so bad that it affects the game, so I can live with it.

In Conclusion.....

So far, every shooter i've played on the Dreamcast has been great, and this one is no exception. Fantastic visuals, nice gameplay, great innovations, plus you can play it in 2 player mode. Smooth.

I would highly recommend this game to any shooter fan, so start scouring ebay now and grab yourself a copy, you won't be dissapointed. Another triumph for Psikyo, yay.

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