Mothergunship is a solid title that hangs its hat on weapon customization, while sacrificing some gameplay. It’s definitely worth a go, even if only to show the insane weapon designs one can concoct.
Quite honestly, I had no idea what to expect with Mothergunship. The artwork for the title looks like Warhammer bred with a Swedish death metal band, which definitely catches your eyes. Having lived 42 years on this earth, 37 spent with gaming, the artwork almost always entices one to try out a game (except Rygar…good lord).
Anyway, beyond the artwork, Mothergunship, at first, seemed like a very pedestrian first-person shooter, mainly because it felt like a younger version of Unreal Tournament on the Dreamcast. The gameplay asks you use your fists to work through the beginning of the game, at least the tutorial, on a futuristic map filled full of metal and coldness, while jumping around from platform to platform trying to dispose of giant pixel enemies. Seriously, all that was missing was a shotgun in this scenario to make it Unreal Tournament on the Dreamcast.
Of course, the best thing about games, at least reviewing them, is that you have to make it beyond that first barrier or gameplay tutorial to see it really open up. Once beyond that barrier, something magical happened. I was able to put together my own guns. And the world, as well as my opinion, of Mothergunship changed forever.
The crux of Mothergunship is two-fold, outside of fighting an insane amount of robots and things trying to kill you. The first, is that weapon customization in this game is the reason you’ll keep playing. Like some warped LEGO set, you get to mix and match parts and build insane looking weaponry to make the experience so much deeper than it should be. As you progress in the game, you’re given coin, which equal out to the ability to purchase weapon parts. Now, these parts consist of connectors, which you need to take careful account of when spending said coin. If you purchase a connector too small, then you won’t leave enough space for bigger weapon parts. For example, I ended up purchasing two/three-connector parts (picture a large slender curved rectangle), where three barrels of a gun connect. If the gun barrels were too big, and in one instance it was, then I couldn’t fit all three barrels on at the same time. I would have to purchase a connector for the connector, then put a big gun barrel on. The solution, at least at the beginning of the game, was to just purchase a huge connector that provides enough space. Right now, I bet you’re thinking to yourself how much fun this game is going to be simply in the weapon customization department. You wouldn’t be wrong. It’s a freaking blast putting together massive weapons to destroy everything in a room quickly. It’s the driving reason to purchase and play Mothergunship.
The second crux to this game is that should you lose during battle, then all those parts are gone. You lose everything. Good day, sir/madam. Seriously, you lose everything if you lose a mission. While you can say that’s more Dark Souls-esque, and you wouldn’t necessarily be misled with that notion, this puts all the responsibility of building the right badass guns (you can have a gun for each hand) at the forefront of your gameplay decisions. It enhances the weapon customization and adds a bit of strategy to the brutish nature of this shooting-the-shit-out-of-everything experience. Should you succeed in your mission, though, then you get to retain those parts for future missions. That’s a silver lining if I ever saw one.
Now, the actual gameplay, jumping around and shooting things, is pretty standard and, going back to my original example, very Unreal. You play in multi-tier levels that spawn enemies. Once those enemies are dispatched, and you can usually find a pattern in all the chaos, then the level is over and you get to do some clean-up, pick-up, and exploration. The latter of the three is minor, though, you do run into challenges and other events that add up to better coin/parts. The challenges are challenges, though, so don’t take them lightly. The same rules apply. If you lose, then you lose everything.
Beyond this gameplay, there is a story of data collection in the game. You’re going from big ship to little ships in no particular pattern trying to access archives and work your way to the Mothergunship, which you hope to destroy. The game does a good job of giving you some non-linear options, as you get a map with the ‘next’ ship on it, while also providing you with paths to minor ships around it the bigger one, which you can access to try and gain more firepower. That decision is up to the player with regards to what ship they jump to, which adds another dimension of longevity and entertainment to the process.
As for the look and feel of the game, again, it’s very Unreal Tournament for the Dreamcast. The graphics are simple, bright, visually pleasing to an extent, but nothing to write home about on this generation of consoles. You’re not going to get the Xbox One X to actually extend itself for this game. The game is what it is and that’s not a bad thing, but it’s just not a visually extraordinary thing. On the audio side of the tracks, it’s fine, though I think the dialogue is really trying to tap into a Portal/Cave Johnson sort of experience. Of course, you’re not playing this game for the dialogue or the dad-like humor. You’re playing it to shoot the shit of things, and it does quite well in that department.
A huge plus for this game is the price point ($24.99) because they could have charged more for this entertainment. The game is fun, provides you with some beautiful cognitive complication with the customization, and it’s a game that you can mindlessly play with a solid smile on your face. Hopefully there is more in the future to this game when Grip Digital/Terrible Posture Game makes their money to make a sequel, but as it stands right now, you’re going to be satisfied with the customization insanity.
Mothergunship is a solid title that hangs its hat on weapon customization, while sacrificing some gameplay. It’s definitely worth a go, even if only to show the insane weapon designs one can concoct.
