Browning is a side-scrolling action game developed by Telenet Japan and published by Riot. A mysterious army is threatening to take over the world and, from their secret hideout, they are building a supreme weapon capable of wiping out the entire planet. Breed Schuyler and his heavy mechanical armor, codenamed "X-BR Browning" (The "BROWN INnovation Gunner"), are deployed to counter the impending threat. The operation "Running Saber" is a go - the machine and its pilot must both infiltrate the Sea-Square island, a man-made fortress that sits somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean, and destroy the enemy's secret weapon. The game consists of five long stages which have to be completed within a time limit, from the island surface to the enemy's underground military and research facility. The Browning comes equipped with a Vulcan gun and the mecha-suit can hover for a short period of time. A force field also protects the armor against enemy attacks and the device automatically recharges itself whenever the energy balance is low and as long as it hasn't reach zero. The game features infinite continues and the player is sent back to the beginning of a stage when the Browning receives a deadly blow. Browning is as English friendly as it gets and even features full English cutscenes.
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You control this mecha as you go through five short stages as it’s mostly a game about fighting bosses. You can walk forward or back, run forward, turn around, jump, crouch, shoot forward, and even hover around. Your mecha is slow like it’s pretty bad. The worst thing is when it walks, you have to wait till it does the full step for it to stop moving. This also means if you want to just jump straight up, you need to wait for the animation to finish. You do at least get rapidfire for the gun. Hovering also just feels weird to control and it sadly has an overheating system so you can’t use it continuously forever. The mecha has 9 shields and they regenerate over time unless you’re at 0 which means you better do a no damage run or you’re done for. You also have unlimited continues.
Now let’s get this over with, this game is brutally difficult. There may be only 5 stages but you will not get these finished on the first try besides maybe the first stage. You will be learning strategies against these bosses and you have to think fast or it’s very easy to lose. The beginning actually isn’t so bad and gives a decent impression especially once you know the controls but goddamn by stage 2 it’s brutal. I’ll go over that more in a bit. The problem mostly stems from the mecha being so huge and non mobile. Hovering can help but sometimes you have to say it or you’ll be screwed. You’ll be dying, dying, dying, and dying. At least the parts with enemies you do for like 30-60 seconds isn’t too bad but there’s one thing I’ll talk about now.
Stage 2 is horrific!!! For the love of god, who the heck thought this was a good stage? It may seem fine with easy ground enemies and a pretty easy boss. Someone at the studio must have thought it was too easy and spam these floating enemies that not only take too many shots but can take 2 shields off of you and even try to kamikazee you if you take too long! You may think to play it safe first before going to the boss but guess what? They respawn everytime you kill some. Even worse, the boss has like 7 of these guys around him, who approved this?! I basically got lucky, I almost rage quit and was gonna beg backloggd mutuals to beat the game for me, it’s that horrible. The worst part is enemies never get this annoying afterwards! God…
The game graphically looks nice when it comes to the cutscenes but otherwise I don’t have much to say besides one stage that reminds me of a Valis stage. The music on the other hand is actually pretty good and is easily the highlight of how frustrating the actual game can be. The game even has English voice acting though it sounds kind of corny but maybe it’s charming. I do wonder why it never got a release here.
By the end of Browning, I felt satisfied. Despite my annoyances with the game, it can feel good to win at this one. In some ways I feel like I should rate it higher because it can have its moments. Then I think of just how flawed it is and how frustrating it can be which makes me think it isn’t just average. I wanna like the game but I just can’t, it sucks because the concept is neat but it really just needs a rework. I can really only recommend it if you want to see if you can beat it. Riot struck out with this one, sorry guys but guess you can’t always hit a good one.
Ironic it's called browning since this game is quite literally poop shit even shame since it's got sum good music a pretty cool opening cutscene an ending