Duration: 22:01

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Skip Intro: 04:07
Skip to Gameplay: 05:17

This is a game of guns for stars that are particularly lucky. "Gun☆Sta" is a Doujin "Lucky☆Star" shooting game. For those not familiar with the franchise, L☆S is an immensely popular four-panel comic/ manga / anime franchise within modern pop-culture circles that, to put it simply, is a light-hearted satire of what it means to be a gamer, a nerd and an overall otaku as told through the eyes of several high school females and a comical accompanying cast. Originally released in 2003 and taking a few cues from "The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya" (which most L☆S media makes several references to), G☆S is a weird dual control side-scrolling action game which is described by the developers as attempting "to merge FPS controls with side-scrolling platformers" with experimental results. After playing the game, I'd have to agree.

The game allows you to use the four primary plucky heroines of L☆S (Konata, Kagami, Tsukasa and Miyuki) with one unlockable character after clearing the game's main events who each have a different gun and sub-weapon as they travel through side-scrolling levels broadcasted by Akira and the "Lucky Channel". From duking it out with "Street Fighter's Guile" to avoiding the fury of the Animate Manager "Meito Anizawa", each level introduces a growing number of enemies and obstacles. Each character's main weapon differs in damage, number of rounds, recoil, reload speed, area of effect, etc., and are infinite, while their sub-weapon has a limited amount of uses. The only two power-ups are for restoring lost health (H.P.) and sub-weapon ammo and are stashed in ceiling lights or other destructible objects.

The biggest crux of the game are the controls; the player aims and shoots with the mouse while moving with the keyboard arrow keys and can also reload manually with the push of a few keys. While this sounds reasonable in context, the game does not employ it well -- the screen moves around so much from aiming and the constant recoil effect from each shot of the main weapon that it can become nauseating pretty quickly. Controlling your character doesn't exactly feel great either as they are impacted by momentum (meaning they start moving slowly, pick up speed, and have to adhere to the same momentum when slowing down or jumping), though everything works the way the game intended it to, so most sections and stages don't feel rigged or poorly designed with a little practice. The game is, perhaps, ironically better due to its simple design and gets a few brownie points for each character having their own humorous exchanges with the various "enemies" you'll face.

Overall, it's a modest time killer. Figuring out the best and fastest ways to navigate levels with each character is kinda fun (and if you know how to avoid certain enemies, you can reach the boss very quickly). This is a video of the game in action. You can find this one at:

https://www.mediafire.com/file/v0its75uw43ir9b/Gun_Sta.7z/file

Enjoy.

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