I’m going to throw out a few names here to start; Mega Man. Donkey Kong Country. Super Mario Bros. 2. I suppose I better stop before I get you
too excited. Gunman Clive, a Wild West themed platformer/shooter by Swedish developer Bertil Hörberg (it seems like every game I review lately is European-developed), pieces together minor elements from all of the above games; except in the case of Mega Man, from which it borrows quite heavily. The end result is not quite at the level of these esteemed games, but it is a decent effort nonetheless... while it lasts.
Gunman Clive originally released on smartphones, a fact which may scare some of you off. You shouldn’t let it. The true birth of this game was a Wii homebrew project which then morphed into the aforementioned smartphone game. This is not a touch screen game shoehorned into a digital pad and button control scheme, but precisely the reverse, and it is now finally available the way that it was meant to be controlled. And it controls very well, using the 3DS digital pad to move while the Y button jumps and the B button shoots. That is the full extent of the controls. It might not look like it, but Gunman Clive feels like an NES game all the way.
Ducks and guns, guns and ducks. The circle of life is complete.Aesthetically the game is pleasing to look upon, using a sketchy hand-drawn style slightly reminiscent of Hotel Dusk (if nowhere near as detailed), and the 3D effect is well done and adds that extra pop. However, the color palette is fairly limited, and never really changes throughout the game, so once you have seen the first stage or two, you have (visually) seen all that there is to see. The music is also enjoyable, and the best way that I can describe it is Mega Man lite with a Western influence. It doesn’t quite live up to the level of the Mega Man franchise in the music department (not trying to raise anyone’s hopes just to have them dashed), but it definitely has that flavor and that’s not a bad thing.
Speaking of, it’s impossible to deny the influence of NES-era Mega Man in the core gameplay of Gunman Clive. Sure Mega Man is not the only platformer/shooter out there, but Gunman Clive lifts so heavily from it that it almost feels like a direct homage to Mega Man at times. The game starts off a bit slow, with Clive (or another selectable character, Ms. Johnson) jumping around a Western town, dodging bullets and shooting enemy cowboys and ducks (yes, ducks), and a couple of stages into it you may even be wondering what the fuss is about. It picks up quickly, however, and soon enough you will be fighting wind currents, riding on trains, flipping gravity, navigating disappearing block patterns (sound familiar?) and more, with the occasional boss fight to mix things up. Just when you think you have the game figured it, it throws something new at you, including some things that I definitely did not anticipate.
Sir, can I please see your tic... ARGH, WHY ARE YOU SHOOTING AT ME?!Gunman Clive also takes a page from the indie game school of design that states that gamers would rather be playing games than staring at game over screens. Much like BIT.TRIP RUNNER and many other indie games, when you die, you’re instantly right back at the last checkpoint, and you have an infinite amount of lives to use as you work towards your final destination. I have no idea why it is taking the major developers so long to understand that pointless breaks in gameplay are not a good thing, but Gunman Clive is yet another indie game that handles deaths right.
It’s hard to find too much to complain about in Gunman Clive, other than some repetitive visuals and the length, but there is a particular area where you are bouncing off of mushrooms and need to get your timing
just right or you won’t get the high bounce required to clear the gaps in front of you. I died way too many times in this section, and it began to become a bit frustrating, as I didn’t fully understand when I was supposed to be pressing the jump button, and it seemed to give me the boost sometimes and others, not. I would also add that the core gameplay, while fun and surprisingly varied for such a short game, isn’t exactly doing anything new, and what it does do has been done better in other games (including its main influence, the NES Mega Man games.) The boss fights aren’t particularly inspiring either, and most can be defeated by adhering to simple patterns.
If you hold the jump button with Ms. Johnson, she floats. No game has ever done that before.I’d say more about the gameplay, but with this game more than any other that I have reviewed, I fear to give too much away. You see, Gunman Clive is only about an hour long from start to finish. It packs that hour with a good variety of gameplay, but it is still only an hour of content, so the more that I talk about it, the more that I worry that I am saying too much. In the end you may get a bit more than an hour out of Gunman Clive, however, depending on how many times you run through the game, and with three difficulty levels and two playable characters to start (each with their own nuances), as well as a third unlockable character that plays a
lot different than the other two, there is some incentive to play through the game more than once. And if the length is still bothering you, keep this in mind; Gunman Clive has a $2 (NA) price tag attached to it, which may be the first time that a Nintendo platform game costs the same as its smartphone counterpart.
Gunman Clive is the very definition of short but sweet, although a bit too short and not
quite as sweet as the games that it borrows from. A part of me finds it difficult to fully recommend it, as it doesn’t really offer much that hasn’t been done before, and it is over almost as soon as it begins. However, the core gameplay is definitely fun and offers a lot of variety, there is some decent challenge involved (especially on hard mode), and with the $2 price tag it is tough to complain about the length all that much. I suppose that you can read a bunch of reviews and get yourself educated on Gunman Clive before you make a decision, but with such a low barrier to entry, why not just try it out yourself? What else can you get for $2 in today’s economy?
Personally, I wouldn’t mind if this $2 eShop game thing became a trend...
I know what you’re thinking, duck. Did he fire six shots, or only five? Well...URL to share (right click and copy) 
