The gangs are themed, in a nod to "The Warriors": The Misconducts are hockey-obsessed nutcases led by someone called the Unholy Goalie, while the Heatseekers are retro-biker gearheads who like fire. I found the shining moments to be within its character design and boss battles, as you encounter literal and figurative gangs of freaks through each level. This adds a dimension of elusiveness you don't see all the time in games of this style, where crouching or jumping are the usual means of avoiding hostile projectiles. Pushing up on the directional pad next to one of many dark doorways or holes scattered on the screen will have you dip inside, partially visible, gun up, with your back against the wall. One very useful, modern wrinkle is an actual cover system. You can also pick up hand-to-hand weapons, like a katana, and if enemies get too close, your basic attack will be to kick them away into a comfortable range before blasting them into bloody, pixelated nuggets. I even picked up a deployable sentry turret. Instead of grenades, you'll also pick up things like remote explosives, cluster bombs or throwing stars. While you'll shoot plenty of people and pick up all kinds of guns ranging from grenade launchers to sniper rifles, there's also a wide selection of throwables. The diversity of combat suggests that to be only partially true. The game's tone and aesthetic might have you think the only way to play is to simply run and gun, shooting until you win. You'll travel through the suburbs, the underground, the industrial area and eventually downtown. The game's blissfully linear breakdown consists of four major levels broken down into smaller chunks, where you encounter a wide range of gun fodder enemies, several minibosses, and eventually the major boss of that level. All of them have different kinds of guns and throwing weapons, but I found all of them to be equally effective. The bounty hunters are a cyborg with a steel jaw (John Sawyer), a gun-wielding Foxy Brown/Angela Davis-esque hybrid (Anna Conda), and a recon droid (Mow Man). As one (or two, if you're playing co-op) of three bounty hunters, you're basically hired to clean up things on the streets, which means bounties on various gangs and their leaders. The reason being a bounty hunter is a big deal is that you're beholden to - dramatic pause - no one. There is more story than that, or at least an attempt at one: You're a bounty hunter in the futuristic 21st century, where society has been taken over by massive corporations and classic "street gangs" are locked in feuds with authorities and each other. This is not about open-world exploration and unlocking hidden parts of your soul this is waking up the echoes of where many of us used to be as gamers, when all we wanted to do was run around, kill bad guys and head to the next level. This 16-bit-like, 2D side-scroller achieves the monumental task of re-conjuring the energy of a whole entertainment era for a handful of glorious hours, where you'll chuckle, laugh, stress out, yell, think about throwing your controller, and repeat the cycle until the end. I'm not saying that's what Easy Trigger Games did in the creation of this experience, but I wouldn't be surprised if that was at least part of the brainstorming process. after a marathon of "Robocop," "Rambo: First Blood Part II," "The Warriors," and maybe some "Last Action Hero" before flipping to "Blade Runner" (because you're feeling sci-fi fancy) or deciding to play Contra for a few hours and sprinkle in a little Technocop (yeah, what do you know about Technocop, eh?) before a slice of stale pizza and bed. It is the kind of game one could conceive at 3 a.m. This is full immersion, a baptism in a vat of boiling cheese where one-liners, bullets and pieces of every goofy bad guy trope bob up and down amidst the bubbles. It's not enough to merely say Huntdown dips into the pool of '80s and '90s action nostalgia.
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