Marrec's Opinion of Gunpoint:
Gunpoint is one of those games where the part's equal up to much more than their sum. The actual mechanics of jumping around the levels feels highly refined and tight. The animations for both launching the jump and landing add to it's appeal and the fact that it's not a simple one to one button press to jump makes it feel like a much different game than something like 'Mark of the Ninja'.
The writing reminds me of noir. If someone read about what noir was all about and then decided to make it fit within a self-aware video game universe. It's not as super self-serious as the noir in Deus Ex but it still ends up feeling very genuine and surprisingly clever.
The puzzle mechanics are what make it really stand out though. If you've played Stealth Bastard then you kind of get the idea. You're jumping around a level and hacking into certain areas of that level, then redirecting the function of certain electrical things within that area. This light switch used to turn on and off a light, but once you hack it you can make it open and close a door. That basic mechanic is spread out through multiple interactions throughout all the levels and creates a sort of emergent puzzle solving quality to the game.
You can also just bash your way through levels, though this is very hard to pull off without dying multiple times.
Gunpoint is one of those games where the part's equal up to much more than their sum. The actual mechanics of jumping around the levels feels highly refined and tight. The animations for both launching the jump and landing add to it's appeal and the fact that it's not a simple one to one button press to jump makes it feel like a much different game than something like 'Mark of the Ninja'.
The writing reminds me of noir. If someone read about what noir was all about and then decided to make it fit within a self-aware video game universe. It's not as super self-serious as the noir in Deus Ex but it still ends up feeling very genuine and surprisingly clever.
The puzzle mechanics are what make it really stand out though. If you've played Stealth Bastard then you kind of get the idea. You're jumping around a level and hacking into certain areas of that level, then redirecting the function of certain electrical things within that area. This light switch used to turn on and off a light, but once you hack it you can make it open and close a door. That basic mechanic is spread out through multiple interactions throughout all the levels and creates a sort of emergent puzzle solving quality to the game.
You can also just bash your way through levels, though this is very hard to pull off without dying multiple times.
