Though your thumbs won't get much of a break, as Gate demands quick action on the triggers to keep up with everything the alien enemy forces are dishing out – unlike some shooters which only task you to constantly hold down a single fire button while dancing and dodging around unfriendly fire, Gate of Thunder additionally asks you to juggle three different alterable aspects of your ship.The first is its speed, and three different settings are available there – normal, slower than normal, and way too much faster than normal. The Minus Button toggles between them, and you don't have to collect any power-ups or anything like that to activate the feature – speed-switching is always available, and you can always adjust your ship's maximum velocity to your liking, adapting to different situations as they arise.
The second customizable feature of your ship is its direction of attack. While your main vessel will always fire its weapons straight ahead to the right side of the screen, a double-tap of the 1 Button will make your accompanying options turn around and fire behind you. You can send some ordnance out to cover your aft, switch back to fire full force to the front, switch back to attack behind again ... and so on and so forth, as often as you want.
Finally, there are three different styles of primary weapon that you can swap between with the 2 Button at any time, after you've collected them as power-ups. The beginning gun is a straight, no-frills laser, but you'll also come across a wider-ranged green wave projector and an explosives sheller called the Earthquake. Most other games in the shooter genre allow only one active weapon at a time, and will usually replace your current gun when you grab a power-up of some different type. But Gate of Thunder stacks them all up, keeping any extras in reserve for when, and if, you choose to toggle over to them.
So there's a lot of variety and possibility in Gate of Thunder's gameplay, and you feel more engaged in piloting this ship than you would behind the flight stick of others, in other games. There are only seven levels to fly through and conquer here, which is a bit disappointing but also about on par for the shooter genre – and if you find yourself getting cocky at having too easily cleared the game on its Normal difficulty setting, there are additional maddening levels of challenge to face. Hard Mode makes things quite a bit tougher, and the even more insane Devil Mode will likely have you tearing out your hair in clumps. So fair warning there.
