Headlander truely is a great game and I had a blast playing it! The concept sounded strange to me at first: You're the last survivor of mankind and the only thing left of you is... your head!? In a flying helmet, ready to mount on robot bodies?

Well, that's the story - and more, of course. You have to fight your way through a large number of security guards to uncover the secret behind it all. Your primary weapon is the ability to take control of a robot after replacing his head with your own, which requires to get close without being shot. In return, you can make use of whatever they had to fight you, namely lasers and even bigger lasers.

Robots have different security levels, designated by their color, and security areas only allow access with sufficient privileges. This brings a tactical element to the game as you need the right robots to enter secured zones. It often isn't easy to bring the respective droid where you need it in order to gain access. Sometimes, this requires thinking, sometimes it takes dexterity or fighting skills to reach your goal.

There are also hidden rooms to discover and you often find technical improvements for your helmet in them (faster movement, more energy, new abilities, and so on). These rooms normally can't be reached with a robot, so they require you to fly using your helmet only. Altogether, I really enjoyed finding all of them and figuring out how to get there.

Fighting is rather easy and there are multiple ways to defeat your enemies. You can shoot off their heads and take over their bodies, you can destroy them with your laser or ram and beat them, resulting in an overload. Your laser beams reflect off walls (as do theirs) to shoot around corners and there are different patterns of laser fire, depeding on the weapon model (single, double, triple, fractal, and so on). However, when you destroy a robot, it will respawn some time later, so it's best to shoot off their heads and leave their torsos standing around.

The very best about this game is the whole presentation. It's like the modern version of a 70s sci-fi movie. Robots are much like people imagined them to be back then, with humurous AI, big guns, following some simple program. Also the graphic style is very clear and polished. It somehow reminds me of the new Star Trek movies trying to resemble the original look, but with modern CGI. Additionally, the menu and loading screens have an awesome retro touch, just like an old 8 bit Atari game (but somehow modern again). The music much reminds me of the Tron 2 soundtrack and adds a great atmosphere.

Here are the pros and cons in my eyes:

Pro
- Interesting story
- Great presentation
- Modern retro look
- Atmospheric soundtrack
- Good humor (I just say door AI)
- Excellent playability - responsive controls for keyboard / mouse AND controller
- Fluent gameplay at steady 60 fps
- Solid and bugfree (I didn't experience a single crash or any other issue)
- Borderless fullscreen window mode
- Moderate difficulty (mostly easy fights, nice riddles)
- Some challenging achievements

Contra
- Lift positions may require longer detours as you can't enter the lift from all sides in certain positions (actually the only thing that annoyed me a little)
- Being such a quality game, I wish it would be longer (it's not really short though, I completed it in 18 hours without rushing)

Conclusion:
This game is a real masterpiece and I enjoyed every second of it. I'll most likely give it another go in order to complete the five achievements I missed. And I'm already looking forward to play it again.

Do I recommend it? Yes, by all means! It's one of the most entertaining games I've played in a while.