It hurts just to play this thing.
Idiots.
Just from watching the opening movie I knew the game would be hard to understand. If it takes a 5-10 minute intro movie to explain why this game exists, its not worth it. Lets see: Dr. Hebble Gate creates new sciency-thingies and later disappears. Eventually contact with a planet is lost and all these bugs show up. But are these bugs the people? Maybe. Is Dr. Gate responsible for it? Perhaps. Is Dr. Gate the final boss? Duh. Thats a yes. (Raise your hand if you saw that one coming.)
In general it all comes down to the gameplay. Which is horrible. The control setup is what really makes this game die during play. If they had made the it just like all the other third-person shooters, it may have had a chance. But nay, they did not. The enemy AI is pretty dead obvious: attack the player. But what did you expect? Theyre bugs. And when they attack in swarms, they dont go all out. Plus when you move away from the action, it takes them a while to notice that youve moved.
Also on a side note, the way you control your character is also buggy. The airtime you get with the jumping is not enough to get you where you want to go, and can often cause you to miss your mark. Thus causing you have to go back through the entire level and aim for the right place again.
The graphics are decent, somewhere along the line of American McGee's Alice; with giant mushrooms and tall areas. Oh wtf do I know what Im talking about? Ive only played two levels. The explosions disappear in that incomplete sort of way. The action is sometimes distracting somehow so you cant get a good look at the terrain or the enemies. The menus are what you would expect from a Sega game: goofy, animated backgrounds, nothing to do with the game itself. Why the feck is there a whale in the Gun Valkyrie logo? I would expect two guns or something, but a whale?
The sound works against the game. In the second canyon level you hear a jet above your head. This may cause you to think "There are jets on this planet?" But no. A bug divebombs you and knocks you over. This will happen quite often and you'll never be able to kill the bug.
I'll conclude this review shortly. If they had made the controls different, made the jetpack jumps last a little longer, given you a REAL objective, the game would have made it. It may keep you entertained for a few minutes, but anything longer will make you hate it even more.