Important Note: GUNHEAD stopped getting updates shortly after release and the devs have said that they moved on after bug fixes and localization so don't expect anything other than the launch content.

CRYPTARK is an impressive indie game with some of the best visual and audio design i've seen in a long time. It is complicated, difficult, oppressive, and still holds up fantastically after a decade.
GUNHEAD is a good first person port of CRYPTARK but a bad sequel. The entire point of GUNHEAD is "what if CRYPTARK was in first person?" and it does that for the most part. The main objective of the gameplay loop is the same; go to long dead alien fleets and evade the automated defenses to scavenge and get paid by a shady organization. There is nothing new about that loop from the first game to this one and the way you interface with that loop is just less refined and thoughtful. The ship that serves as the main hub and start point for every mission is aesthetically unappealing and annoying to get around to the different systems. The things you can do in the ship are simplistic and needlessly spaced out. The UI and menus are bland and seem like a weak copy and paste from the first game. Combat is admittedly "new" if you consider fighting the same 2D enemies from CRYPTARK with the same mech suits and weapons but in 3D as new. I do appreciate them adding in some interesting bosses with different forms and attack patterns but I find them to be unenjoyable whenever the level has the optional time limit side objective, making the fights feel like a nearly complete guarantee to fail that objective each time.
I'm recommending this game because in a vacuum, its a good rougelike with some nice retro FPS gameplay. However, I'm personally disappointed as a big fan of the first game who hoped for much more out of it. I got a good 8 hours of gameplay out of it before I lost interest and felt a much stronger urge to play CRYPTARK again. If you really like the visual design of the setting but want a more feature complete 2D twinstick shooter, go play CRYPTARK.
6.5 or 7/10 feels about right for this game