This is one of the rarer occasions where the game is as awesome as the cover implies. Yes, really.
Awaken, tainless one. Strife and ruin are calling to you like lustful sirens. Is this not your desire? To march into a war unbidden. To shame every atrocity thus far committed? In the end, your will is of no consequence. Your purpose has been ordained and you are a slave to your destiny.
Just like the rest...
SturmFront: The Mutant War is a top-down Run-and-Gun action game from a German company, Andrade, made for the PC, Play Station Vita, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, and Xbox One. Inspired by classic arcade run-and-gun shooters, the game is a loving retraux with the onscreen gore and violence cranked past the charts.... and it's awesome.
In 1984, a viral outbreak in a European bio-lab had resulted in the population of an entire city being converted into mutant abominations. A super-soldier named Siegfried von Hammerstein, who's in the same lab in process of being converted into another bio-weapon, awakens from his slumber and upon realizing the world outside is in ruins, grabs a machine-gun and starts cleaning the mutant-infested streets with bullets, as every super-soldier in every arcade-style shooters are wont to do.
An Updated Re-release titled SturmFront: The Mutant War: Übel Edition is made available in 2021.
Do NOT confuse this with Storm Front (Dresden Files).
Time to cleanse the disease from the inside out, once and for all!
- '90s Anti-Hero: Siegfried is clearly modeled after the archetypal immoral anti-hero, being a musclebound, heavily-scarred, ruthless killing machine armed to the teeth with assorted weapons and looking like he just stepped out of the cover of some 90s DC comic. (Specifically, a blonde Lobo?)
- All There in the Manual: According to supplementary materials, the mutant outbreak started when a German scientist named Dr. Hartmuth Griesgram, fearing the extinction of mankind, began creating synthetic humans, only for the experiment to go wrong resulting in mutated abominations escaping the lab, where it then spreads to the streets and goes out of control. The hero's full name, Siegfried von Hammerstein, is absent in the game as well (he's simply called Siegfried in-game) but it's there in the manual.
- Badasses Wear Bandanas: Siegfried does, and he's a mutant-killing soldier who slays enemies by the dozens per step.
- Beam Spam: All the bosses, including the first one. There's barely a second during boss fights with the screen having zero onscreen projectiles, what with their tendencies to attack nonstop. The Final Boss takes it to the extreme with organic cannons installed in every corner around it, all of them firing at the same time.
- Big Creepy-Crawlies: Several of the mutant abominations Siegfried battles are based on insects, including spiders, slugs, centipedes, and the like.
- Bullet Hell: On both fronts - Siegfried's power-ups allows him to fire his weapons non-stop and clutter the screen with bullets, slaying mutants in obscene numbers, but every now and then mutant enemies capable of firing projectiles will send their attacks in hard-to-dodge waves at Siegfried. And that's not getting into all the bosses' abilities to spam energy blasts everywhere in the confined boss arena.
- Escaped from the Lab: Siegfried in the opening scene, where he busts out of the laboratory he's created.
- Eyepatch of Power: Siegfried wears one over his right eye to complete the archetypal "I'm so badass" look.
- Fire-Breathing Weapon: The flamethrower weapon is another pickup that incinerates everything on the wrong side of the screen.
- Gone Horribly Wrong: The results of the super-soldier project, basically, which ends up turning the entire city's populations into mutated abominations after an unexpected outbreak.
- Gorn: The game delivers the onscreen gore and guts by the buckets - slain mutants will explode into Ludicrous Gibs and remain on the spot, and it's possible to paint entire streets red with guts of enemies. Heck, even the congratulatory screen at the end of each level ("BOSS EXTERMINATED!") is written in blood!
- Grenade Launcher: The game calls it "Mortar" but it functions a lot like grenade shooters from older arcade games: firing a bouncing projectile ahead which does Splash Damage in a wide radius. It can also be upgraded with the Spread Shot with devastating (but entertaining) effects.
- Half the Man He Used to Be:
- Right off the start of level 1, Siegfried escapes his confines and sees various other experimental subjects in the same room as him, neither as lucky without their lower bodies.
- Among the scenery gorn, occasionally Siegfried can come across dead scientists ripped from their waists by mutants.
- Mook Maker: Mutant spawners, which creates the lowest-level monsters, are all over the place. They resemble a giant mouth growing out of the ground where the lesser mutants will periodically crawl out from.
- More Dakka: So that Siegfried can kill more mutants.
- Multiboobage: Bossom Breed Mistress, the second boss, is a green-skinned giant mutant woman with three boobies, which repeatedly juggles about as she battles Siegfried. Kill her and Siegfried will exclaim, "Shake your boobs!"
- Mutant: Well, it's in the title. Every single onscreen enemies killed by Sigfried, basically.
- Natural Weapon: Most of the mutants and all the bosses can fire energy projectiles from their bodies. Those which can't will claw and slash Siegfried from up close.
- Oculothorax: The lowest-level of mutant mooks are giant eyeballs which took up half their bodies, on insect-like legs crawling all over the place. Later on there are huge eyeball monsters growing from the ground capable of firing Eye Beams at Siegfried.
- Plasma Cannon: The plasma gun, which is named as such in-game. It fires bolts of superheated plasma instead of bullets or rockets, and is handy when melting the flesh off various enemies.
- Reflecting Laser: One of the power-ups fires arrow-shaped laser bolts, that when upgraded can bounce off surfaces until hitting the closest mutant.
- Scenery Gorn: As expected in the aftermath of a mutant outbreak. Each and every stage, in addition to the hordes of mutant monsters roaming everywhere, also contains bodies of slain civilians and scientists, wrecked buildings, damaged vehicles, and plenty of decorative gorn.
- Sequel Hook: A possible one."The war seems over, but where are those whom are responsible for the massacre?"
- Shows Damage: For the bosses, and for Siegfried as well. As boss enemies start having their health depleted, they will visibly break apart and lose chunks of flesh. Meanwhile, Siegfried's current health meter is displayed at the bottom along a shot of his face, which becomes increasingly bloody when his life is dangerously low.
- Spread Shot: One of the earliest upgrades Siegfried can obtain, which allows him to cover a far wider range than his default firearms. It can be upgraded repeatedly, too, up to a spread of twelve rounds at maximum.
- Stationary Boss: All the bosses are incapable of moving about, having their bodies rooted in a corner of the arena. They're absolutely no pushover though, given their Bullet Hell abilities.
- Stuff Blowing Up: The rocket launcher and mortar power-ups, suitable for exploding enemies. Combined with the Spread Shot and you're in for some glorious fun time.
- Super-Soldier: Siegfried, which allows him to go One-Man Army on entire legions of mutant monstrosities and emerge unscathed.
- Your Head Asplode: The animations given to the gigantic boss enemies once they're depleted of their health.
- Zerg Rush: The preferred methods of lesser mutants in attacking is by swarming. It's not uncommon to see the screen cluttered with around twenty enemies in later levels, making a beeline for Siegfried from all directions, only to be greeted by bullets or explosives.
- Death and destruction lies in Siegfried's wake. Even in his darkest moments, sheer hatred persevered when flesh and steel began to falter. But this inferno cannot be smothered. Siegfried's very existence is poised on the perpetuation of war and violence. And so he marches on, against no one, against the world, battle for battle's same.
