[Review] Enter The Gungeon

[R e i]

 

Enter the Gungeon is a game I should love. It’s a dungeon-crawling, bullet hell roguelike that has a whimsical soundtrack and great visuals. But all of this personality and style is undermined by conflicting concepts, and Enter the Gungeon's lasting appeal suffers for it. Ultimately, Enter the Gungeon is spoiled by how it fanatically adheres to the rules of all the genres it blends together. It’s a roguelike, meaning death in the Gungeon results in a complete loss of progress. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this--it prides itself on being a bullet hell shooter with steep difficulty spikes--but its insistence on stripping away all progress at the start of each run is oil to water when mixed with its focus on collecting zany items and weapons.There are a large number of weapons to discover and use, and these range from familiar firearms like shotguns and automatic rifles, to more absurd creations like a gun that shoots sharks. Likewise, there’s a massive number of items to be discovered, offering different stat bonuses and perks to be used in varying situations. The most powerful and unique weapons come with their own distinct animations and application, and figuring out the best way to use them during hectic combat situations is as fun as it is challenging. Opening each new chest in the dungeon evokes the same feeling of anticipation as opening a brand new pack of trading cards. What will you find? Will it be rare and awesome, or all too common? But there’s a catch here; the scales are tipped in favor of the player finding a more mundane or mediocre weapon a large percentage of the time. Strange as it is to say, there may be too many weapons in here. While some feature entertaining and quirky attributes, many feel like variations of your starting weapon with barely any major distinctions between them. They’ll get the job done, but it’s a letdown to discover a wicked laser gun one round and be saddled with a handful of slightly more powerful rifles for the next few. A bit of trimming down to make extraordinary weapons a more frequent drop would help to foster the “one more round” mentality found in great roguelikes.You eventually gain the ability to seed each dungeon with items and weapons, but you always have to start with the same wimpy load-out made up of so-so weapons and various character-specific items. It’s like playing Pokemon, but instead of adding new Pokemon to your team and using them at will throughout your journey, you’re constantly forced to begin again when you lose any battle, with only the Pokedex serving as proof of your discoveries. And whenever you have to start over, you’re more likely to find a slew of ordinary Rattatas or Zubats while only occasionally encountering something more notable. It’s a contentious combination. Enter the Gungeon’s fetishization of wacky guns and the meager drip feed exposure a player has to them begins to deliver diminishing returns. Having some amount of meaningful progression beyond filling up a log book with found items would help greatly, even if it was simply granting the player minor stat boosts or occasional upgrades.

 

 

This conflict is unfortunate, because everything surrounding the core of Enter the Gungeon is great. Enemy types are as varied as the items themselves, each with their own particular attack patterns that eventually lead to an epic barrage of bullets to be dodged and countered. Well-balanced and finely tuned control mechanics--like a dodge roll with several frames of invincibility or bullet-wiping blank rounds--arm players with just enough options that they can successfully evade fire while doling out punishment in harrowing encounters, and each dungeon level has its own theme to keep the visuals fresh. Care has been placed in the smallest details, mixing retro-inspired pixelated artwork with more contemporary styles of visual feedback. Visually, Enter the Gungeon is stunning. Care has been placed in the smallest details, mixing its retro-inspired pixelated artwork with more contemporary styles of visual feedback. There’s tremendous impact to each of the on-screen actions. Books burst into clouds of loose pages when shot or kicked, explosions rattle rooms, and a generous color palette creates an interesting gothic fantasy/cartoon fusion that aligns with the game’s darkly humorous tone. When coupled with a pulsing, energetic soundtrack, Enter the Gungeon is an audiovisual treat. Its flaws elsewhere are all the more disappointing. So much care is apparent in its construction, but in its attempt to merge multiple genres and styles together, Enter the Gungeon’s most important elements--namely its roguelike flavors and massive offering of distinct weapons--don’t gel. It’s a game at odds with itself. Leave Blank.Enter The Gungeon has a gun fetish. The story revolves around a giant bullet and a gun that can kill the past. Enemies are mostly bullets, the end-of-level lift is a shell casing, the in-game art modelled around gun paraphernalia, Even the health bar models its hearts on bullets.Enter The Gungeon is the latest in a long line of top-down roguelike shooters. It takes its inspiration from genre standouts Nuclear Throne and Binding of Isaac, but also adds many other cool touches to make something that’s a blast to play, even if it doesn’t quite match the highs of its peers. From Binding of Isaac, it borrows the chaotic room-based structure, and the ridiculous boss battle blocking your path to the floors below. From Nuclear Throne, the mass of guns and power-ups, the ridiculous weapons and host of weird and wonderful enemies.

 

 

READ NEXT ness-nintendo Nintendo Download list: 18th July 2013 (North America) Enter the Gungeon is a prime example of how reviewing a game can change over time. I first reviewed Enter the Gungeon for PC on another website – the game has been out for a long time now, so a lot of people know what the game offers – making writing about it a little harder as I want to offer something fresh. It’s a pseudo top-down roguelike shooter that grounds itself in features set out by The Binding of Isaac and Nuclear Throne. The base game has received many updates and has been featured on YouTube and Twitch for quite some time. So, there’s not really much that I can say about the game that’s new. This is a direct transfer of the latest PC release, including the new updates from the Supply Drop patch – which introduced new items, features and enemies. The game itself plays the same way on Switch that it does on other systems (with one difference I will come to), however, it does feel a little easier than it has previously. Dodging enemy fire with the dodgeroll system is still tight, the weapons are still very hit and miss depending on what you pick up and the enemies can still be bothersome. But, there feels like there’s a little leeway in the speed of bullet momentum and the enemies aren’t quite as accurate. This might be because of the elastic approach to updating a game on PC – things change often and I’m sure a future patch will tweak some of these aspects.Enter the Gungeon doesn’t just take cues from roguelikes that came before; yes, there’s a huge focus on repeated play that allows you to unlock new items and guns and it features the difficulty that usually accompanies such a game. For example, it took me about an hour to finish The Binding of Isaac for the first time; it was easily around 40 hours before I watched the credits roll here. Because Enter the Gungeon is a bullet hell shooter and accuracy with movement as well as shooting is key. And, of course, like all roguelikes, it depends on the build of your character. There are a few base characters to choose from; The Pilot, The Convict, The Hunter and The Marine – plus a couple to unlock, who change the game drastically. Each offers a different starting weapon and item that offers perks throughout play. The Hunter has a pistol and crossbow, but also a dog that will occasionally dig up keys, ammo and blanks, the latter is used to help clear rooms of bullets for a brief breather. The Pilot comes with a laser pistol, discounts in the shops and a lockpick that offers chances of opening a chest without a key. Add to this the hundreds of combinations of guns and perks unlocked along the way and the game becomes incredibly 

On one run you might not find anything of any worth in chests or shops, meaning that you’ll face off against a boss with just a starting weapon of low damage. On the flip-side, you could have a run that sees you running at a boss with an RPG, a Shotgun shell that fires guns or the ability to fly while wielding a rifle that fires magical bullets of ice, fire and poison. There might be a run where guns come up short, but defensive items are plenty. You might get to the third floor boss or right to the final boss, an enormous dragun that puts the term 

And there’s SO MUCH to do. New shops unlock as you discover people in the Gungeons. Challenge modes open up, boss rush rooms appear and secret routes make themselves available as you play. As with so many games of this ilk, no run is ever the same and players will be constantly striving for that perfect build that clicks and allows the game to be vanquished and the past to be erased – which is the primary aim of the title.