Originally published January 29th 2015 on the Seafoam Gaming forums 

Title: Gunman Clive 2

System: 3DS (eShop)

Price: $2.99

Release date: 1/29/2015

The main game/story

In this sequel to the popular action game Gunman Clive, you take control once again of the titular hero or his friends, as you try to stop a group of bandits from causing trouble all over the world! Just like the first game, it’s an action platformer, similar to Contra in some aspects.

Graphics

While the first game had a hand-drawn artstyle throughout the entire adventure, this game changes things up a bit by still keeping that artstyle, but adding color to a lot of characters and backgrounds in the game. Some levels like the jungle area and the sky fortress look great with the addition of color, and it helps show off the 3D effect a bit more than the original game did.

Music and sound effects:

In the original Gunman Clive, the music was pretty basic and generic, with not much going for it to make it memorable besides the main theme. However, this game blows the original OST out of the water in every possible way. Tracks have more variety, more emphasis added to each of them which led to quite a few of them being very memorable as I played through the game. While the sound effects are pretty much the same from the first game, I didn’t mind as they work just as well here as they do in the first game.

Gameplay

Right off the bat you have more variety in the gameplay. After the first level having the familiar feel of the first game, the next few levels change things up a bit, with more creative level designs and clever enemy placement. After you breeze through the first world, things start to change drastically. The transition to the next area of the map is played in a Space Harrier styled level, which controls very nicely with the Circle Pad and is a great change of pace.

Upon completing the transition level, the variety is shown off especially well here, with levels that have constantly changing gravity, an epic escape level where you ride on top of a panda, cool boss battles that require quite a bit of strategy, and lots of other unique features. This helps prevent the game from getting stale, making each part of the world feel unique, and that really helps improve this game over the original Gunman Clive. It’s still a bit short at only 25 levels, but the four characters to choose from along with three different difficulty modes lead to quite a bit of replay value if you are looking for a good challenge.

Conclusion

In conclusion, Gunman Clive 2 improves over the original game in every possible way, with better levels, better bosses, and the addition of color to the world, Gunman Clive 2 is definitely worth the $3! If you are looking for a good challenge lately and want one with a lot of variety, then Gunman Clive 2 is a great choice! I give Gunman Clive 2 a 9 out of 10.

Thanks to Bertil Hörberg for the review code.