GunGirl 2

If there's one subject that seems to never get old, no matter how much it is being used in almost everything from movies, TV series and video games, it is the zombie concept. Whether they are slow and dumb, or fast and vicious, their strength lies in their numbers and the quickness with which they manage to spread the disease.

In GunGirl 2, cliches are mounting higher than the pile of corpses you leave behind, but that does not seem to affect the overall fun factor. Hence, even if the main character is bluntly named Gungirl, while the male version goes by the nickname Gundude, none of it seems to matter, since games like this do not give you the luxury to sit and analyze the story for plot holes. If you do that, you leave yourself open to the hordes of scripted enemies that run backwards and forwards between predetermined locations, or the holes in the middle of the police station that are filled with deadly spikes, for some reason.

The game tries to integrate a story element underneath all the other aforementioned layers, but it basically reduces itself to “You were sleeping one night and the zombies took over the world”. Hence, after you get the gun you obviously keep nearby, you start a campaign against the undead and vow to get rid of each and every one of them, if for no other reason than the fact that they disrupted your sleep pattern.

GunGirl 2 is a pure platformer game, with 2D levels, holes in the ground and all the other elements taken from the golden era of the arcades. Thus, it should come as no surprise that zombies drop everything from weird energy orbs that offer you skill points, to ammo, medikits and various other items you need to survive the armageddon. In order to advance through some levels, you sometimes need to look for a specific key or an item, which unlocks the way further into the game.

Yet another thing that almost died with platformers is the boss at the end of the level, which poses one last challenge before you are allowed to move on. The game at hand features them as well, with the same repetitive patterns that beg to be learned and used against themselves. What kind of makes this title special, on the other hand, is the addition of experience points, which allow you to level up and increase certain attributes, to make your character more resilient against the threat of the horde.

In the end, GunGirl 2 does not make any attempt to sell itself as anything else but a fun game, with the added benefit of bringing back pleasant memories from simpler times. Thus, across the few hours of ever more difficult levels, you can taste the past and experience some long lost memories, coated with a lot of blood for good measure.