Gun Metal

A classic from my childhood that I'm now actually equipped to finish... but still quite difficult at points. Very nice graphics really. not hyper-real but could pass for stylised. Very fun and fairly slick controls - accounting for the fact it's from the era where sometimes you still had to use arrow keys, not every computer seemingly had a number row, etc. Not the most responsive but flying around as a plane feels so fun.

It's got this unfinished, old-school weekend rental charm! I love the early 2000's 3D aesthetic in general, and environments are very pretty and atmospheric. The "Boss" designs are really mechanically elegant and have you using all you tools in a variety of ways to take them down. The controllers "aiming" could be a little faster, I found it really slow to turn and still awkward to aim. Most people's complaints seem to be that the game is too short, which is true, it's like a 2 hour game. As I said the game feels unfinished. It's hard to put into words, but you don't really get an escalation and then payoff, it's more just "Things happen", usually the same "defend the thing" mission structure, deal with it. Game also uses an Empire Earth (Royalty free) song for the menu (Wouldn't have known if it wasn't for that Mandaloregaming video XD) But, it does feel good to play.

What makes the game interesting to me is, because of the complete absence of story, lore and characters, I wonder if I was playing as the bad guys? From what I could gather from the generals briefings and mid-mission shouting, the enemy is completely dehumanised to the point of being called "scum" and that they "need to be all wiped out", no surrender. We're also not fighting on Earth, but some other planet called Helios (The very last mission says it) which means we've colonised this planet. And the second to last mission says the Enemy are getting their forces "from" Earth. So are we rebels? Why did we rebel? What's our human rights policy if we're breaking off from Earth? Is this like every country on Earth unified under an authoritarian regime? (America) or are resources so stripped back on Earth that we needed to colonise another planet, and "we" are trying to monopolise the resources here to protect the interests of the elite in charge of THIS planet? We're the ones using Napalm and other experimental weapons that are definitely banned by the Geneva Convention. We have "civilians" housed right next to military infrastructure and sometimes military researchers are referred to as "civilian casualties", which no? They'd be classified as "service members", so are we inflating our civilian casualty numbers for PR? Plus the General on the final mission says "Allied forced are expendable". So we're a confederacy? and OK with using our Allies as cannon fodder? This whole game makes me feel like I'm being propagandised throughout a war I know literally nothing about.

Good soldiers follow orders. If you wanna keep your friends and family alive you better join the army to defend them. Get in the robot Shinji. The enemy are invading! There's no time to ask questions!! Kill the enemy!!! Kill the scum...

This game is one of the Mech games I've ever played.

The graphics are outdated and unbearable, but the game is fun.

Time for a remake!

Not Recommended

The game has janky controls, mission timers and fail conditions it will never display on-screen, allied AI units are either absent or quite useless, and every single mission begins with the camera panning around your mech for no good reason. Many of the weapons are questionable at best and they never give you enough ammo. You are rushed through most missions, and spend most of the game on defense, having to protect a civilian population you've been given no reason to care about or any attachment to. Finally, your commanding officer is often not helpful when a voiceline from him would be useful, and I will not tolerate his condescending tone when a mission is failed.

The good parts of the game are a varied weapon arsenal, and decent destruction effects for the tech utilized back when this was made.

Conclusion: If you must have a PC game with transforming jets, I would recommend Transformers War for Cybertron and Fall of Cybertron over this game any day. Even with what tech and knowledge they had back when Gun Metal was created, they could have made a far higher quality game, a longer game, and a more technically competent game.

At best, it's a 4/10. At worst, it scores 2/10.

Gun Metal is a classic. I grew up playing this game on disc with my mom's old Acer work laptop. It works fairly decent on modern hardware and is still a lot of fun to play.

The game is very simple and has a basic two stage combat mode. Play either as a jet or a mech and switch at any point in battle. Both modes have rockets and a slowly unlocking arsenal across all the missions. Weapons are unique to each form and have a variety of uses from ground missiles to aerial flack guns and pulse weapons.

It all culminates in a fun little ending that I remember fondly. You won't be blown away but this game is a lot of fun and does what it sets out to do, blow shit up.

A childhood classic

Does one thing and does it well.

Very dated, but also very charming. A respectable price for what it is, and runs fine out of the box. Recommended

I feel like Starscream

10/10 its an old but good

I first got the physical copy of this game for free from a newspaper back in the day and used to play alot but never had time to finish it and lost the copy i had after a while

after years later i finally found this masterpiece that i've been looking for so long, totally worth the money and the memories.

This game is legitimately so awesome. Yes, it is dated in some aspects. But the gameplay is so incredibly fun, and the transformation from mech to jet is near seamless.

The levels start off pretty basic, but then eventually escalate to being full on battlefields where you have multiple points to attack and defend, leading to a natural and exciting difficulty increase that prevents the game from ever feeling stale. I also like how the levels are purposefully set up to motivate the player to use both mech form and jet form, and not essentially forcing you to stay in one form to get the level completed. New enemy types and new weapons are introduced with each level, which once again, keeps the game exhilarating to play from start to finish. It is a short game, but one that can be replayed every couple years because it is just such a fun and tight knit experience.

It's a shame the studio is long gone and that we will more than likely never see a sequel to this. I'd love for someone to buy the IP for cheap or create a spiritual successor to this, as it is unironically the best Transformers game without Transformers

This was one of my favorite games back in the day, still has a cool promise but as an adult cracks are really obvious. Terrible performance (30fps lock), zero world building and story, no emphasis on any of the characters, tidieous level design with no checkpoints and many more problems make this a hard game to recommend. Still, it holds a charm for me due to nostalgia, and as I stated before the games premise is still kinda cool. I wouldn't recommend it if you never played it, definietly give a try if you played it before.

I've got 3 copies of Gun Metal on disc - bought quite a few graphics cards over the years, for a while, they all came bundled with this game...

And now I own it on Steam too.
Worth it.