Sturmfront - The Mutant War: Ubel Edition | PS4 Review

Sturmfront comes at us guns blazing in an alternate 1984 timeline where human's tampering has caused a mutant apocalypse. From the ashes, and ruins rises a mutant army hellbent on eradicating the remainder of the human species. As the lone hero, a cybernetic unit of a man named Siegfried von Hammerstein, you must gun and burn your way through waves of mutant scum with extreme prejudice. Using both a gun, and a flamethrower to dispatch anything moving back from whence it came.

In the vein of Ikari Warriors, and games of similar top down design the simple yet chaotic twin stick shooter that is Sturmfront harkens back to an unapologetic era of gaming where censorship wasn't so rife. As the protagonist Siegfried you must blaze your way through mobs, and nests of mutant monstrosities as they try to snuff your life out. As a dual weapon wielder you have on hand an upgradeable auto-rifle, and can pick up limited use weapons. That along with the flamethrower that requires constant refueling via gas cans you can burn spawning nests of mutants. The catch is you only have three hits of health before it's GAME OVER. Thankfully though there are health refills scattered across the stages just in case you find yourself in need.

Each stage you face is a maze of mutants, and mayhem. Filled with destructible objects, power-ups, point orbs, and mutants as well as mutant bosses. Your goal is to destroy anything and everything in your path for points while progressing upwards through the environments to the end boss. Death, while inconvenient, is not the end of this journey. Upon death your score is reset, but you get immediately resurrected in the stage you made it to allowing you to continue onward as long as you desire to. Along your quest for extermination your kills, and deaths are tallied alongside your top score. Something that is shown at the main menu area. 

As an upgraded version of an original release this Sturmfront harbors visual upgrades, and new additions to gameplay to improve upon the experience. There's more guts, and gore along with quality of life improvements among other things. The game as a whole is uncensored, and even contains a beastly boss with, dare I say it, three exposed breasts. There's plenty of blood, and gore, and the game's protagonist even comes complete with a DOOM/Wolfenstein inspired avatar that gets more bloodied as said protagonist takes damage. Let me not forget the announcer voice that is constantly exclaiming your praise as you complete feats of prowess. All to a heavy metal soundtrack suiting of the neo-German science fiction setting.

The Verdict ...

While I greatly enjoyed the simplicity of the shoot 'em up style gameplay within the Ubel Edition of Sturmfront, and the thematic elements of it's gore filled adventure I feel it was a bit hollow in presentation. Even with the upgrades. While I felt like a badass plowing through mutants, and turning them inside out with guns and the flamethrower the lack of a definitive death cheapened the experience. The fact that there seems to be no leaderboards on console outside of the local records also makes the score chasing less meaningful. In saying this though I still enjoyed the game despite it's short lived length, it's scoreboard shortcomings, and it's scatterbrained mythology which is mostly lost to obtrusive pop-up text and loading screens. Being it's an upgrade of an older game I don't know ho they could have fixed this, but it is worth noting. In the end it gets an okay for it's unapologetic lack of censorship, and it's noteworthy nod to retro games of old. It's fun, and listed at a decent price. Sometimes mindless mutant mayhem is worth the price of admission.