Free Saturday Shootage: Jets 'n' Guns

Ah. "'n'". It's had a difficult history as a link between words, poor little "'n'", but let's overlook a serious analysis of grammatical monstrosities in pop culture. There's other things to deal with - namely, Jets 'n' Guns Gold, that you can currently download. For free. And it's the full thing, As long as you do it quickly. At the time of writing, there's still sixteen hours left to download it and install it. And for fans of old-skool Amiga Shooters, you'll find a suitable Saturday blast a-waiting. Opinions and similar follow, via the medium of internet words.

Firstly, if you're already playing, you actually have to read the screen of text which appears. Or, at least, it's useful too - I clicked through, and got struck in, and had trouble working out how you were meant to survive with the pea-shooter I was given. But there's a shop you're meant to visit to tool up before heading forth. Do that, or fail.

You'll probably fail anyway, as it's not exactly that easy.

But it's not easy in a way which really is making me reach back to the days of the Amiga - it feels distinctly like something which Team 17 would have made after Project X, or and the Bitmap's Xenon influence is highly visible in the shop sequence. However, since you've only one life, there's no risk in losing your implements of shootage.

Other details remind me of two games which I've barely thought of for years. Namely Core's 1942-clone-with-gore Banshee and DMA's Operation-Wolf-meets-ED-209-gorefest Walker. Both games happily threw in a mass of tiny little Lemmings-esque guys who get reduced to smears of gore by your weaponry in the way which real little guys tend to. In fact, despite the excesses of explosions, realism is the word which keeps on coming to mind. It's this sort of approach to an abstractly simple game which most reminds me of the Amiga - being the half-way house between consoles and PCs, the Amiga kind of picked up a few things which always sat oddly. Remember Project X's ship gaining more intertia the more equipment it picked up? That sort of thing, which is as misplaced thinking as people trying to make their slippy-slidey ice-worlds an accurate simulation of what it'd be like to climb a mountain whilst wearing dungarees and a pair of kicking trainers.

I appear to be channeling the ghost of Amiga Power. Forgive me.

The realism - as well as shops-over-pure-pick-ups - is shown in the ability for you to over-heat your guns by firing too much. You're able to upgrade all the stats on your ship, including your heat-dispersal, meaning that as well as paying for bigger guns, you have to support the infrastructure which... well, christ! If you give a guy a gun, for God's sake, let him fire it.

Except I'm actually rather fond of Jets 'n' Guns. It's mainly because these ideas, while they would be harmful if they spread too far, are now such an oddity that the resultant game seems really quite fresh. Or, at least, a suitable small retro kick to the days when I pretty much had SWIV tattooed on my trigger fingers. That metaphor makes no sense. Look over there! A distraction!

So: a bit of a giggle. It's Saturday afternoon. A little ultraviolence would do you good. Get it from here, before the timer runs out.

Thanks to Joachim Froholt for pointing us at this.