REVIEW – How would you fix the past in case you had the opportunity to do so? Build a time travel machine, or maybe send a message back in time to warn yourself? Well in Enter the Gungeon to fix the past you’ll have to kill it with a magical gun that is inside a heavily defended fortress! With four characters (and a few secret ones), lots of weapons, and bullet hell spawning bosses. Is it worth trudging in the depths of this six-chambered roguelike, or should we just accept our future? Find out here!

Enter the Gungeon is a 2D pixel roguelike with a rather unusual theme: Everything is about weapons, more specifically guns, and ammo. We have four characters unlocked in the beginning all bent on fixing their mistakes. The four characters have primary weapons at their disposal, a special skill, and a special item. All of the characters are rather weak in the beginning, and the game requires more skill than the usual roguelikes such as Binding of Isaac or Nuclear Throne. While generally those games if you get a powerfull weapon you can steamroll the levels in entering the Gungeon even with an excellent gun you can end up dead if you are not careful.

The weapons that we pick up or unlock during our runs are both powerful, and hilarious at times. You can have a trident, a t-shirt gun, a devil’s pitchfork, a snowball gun and many other fun guns that allow you to slaughter the enemy. You can also save people in The Gungeon so that later in the hub area you can buy stuff from them or even unlock shortcuts. Most of the roguelike mechanics are present here also such as: Tough as nails enemies, a shop to purchase items from, bosses that take a gazillion hits to kill, and no save points. So what makes it Gungeon so different from the rest, and so enjoyable?

Mostly because while Nuclear Throne or Binding of Isaac can have you restart an entire session if you did not pick up powerful enough items, Gungeon merely requires good reflexes and some skill. The first bosses can be even killed off with the starting weapons easily. It is just about pattern recognition to defeat the enemy. The bosses become easier with each run, but not insanely easy, as even with a good gun it can take some time to reduce their health bar.

Firing blanks is not a shame

The game even though a roguelike has some pretty new mechanics that improve on the genre. First off you have blanks that for a short period make enemies’ bullets disappear, and allow the player for some time to breathe. Second, and this is a welcome inclusion for the game, there are teleporters in almost every second or third room. So instead of backtracking for minutes, you just open your map click on the green icon, and you are there in that chamber. Currency and health are rare in the levels, and even if you can buy them at the shop, I recommend not doing so, or you can end up with no money to buy quality guns. Most of the guns are based around a gimmick and a fun concept, but in the end, it is all about shooting.

Bosses in this game are hell incarnate. Most of them have a few patterns to learn, but they also have their unique abilities and attacks. The bosses have fun names like Trigger Twins, Bullet King, Gorgun, and Gatling Gull plus much more.

Jammed

There are some issues with the game. Mainly that the pace of the title is all over the place. The basic rooms are easy in the first levels. However, the bosses are tough. Same goes for the later levels. The base rooms become involved, and the bosses even more hellish. Health and Ammo are also scarce, so you’ll end up with trying to act almost perfectly. If you try to spend „Ammo” on hearts or armor to fix your mistakes, you’ll end up with the possibility of not having enough to buy weapons or keys from the shop. Which are important as the other problem is that if you only have bad guns, it takes a lot of time to complete the game.

The length of each run can be a bit too much for some people. While a speed run can be done in twenty-five or thirty minutes in Nuclear Throne, or even 40 minutes with Binding of Isaac, but here it can take up to an hour or even a bit more. So this is a roguelike that will need a lot of patience and time. If you do not have a free time to play it, you might want to play something less lengthy.

A bullet and a penny

However even with the pacing issues, and with some weird game mechanic choices Enter the Gungeon is still one of the newest, best and unique experiences out there. It adds new mechanics to an old and tired genre, and even in a case of using the wrong weapons, if you are lucky, you can succeed in the end. A fun game for all the fans, and even some for those who do not enjoy the genre, as it is more about skill than having the best gun.

-Dante-

Publisher: Devolver Digital

Developer: Dodge Roll

Genre: 2D Action Roguelike

Release date: Apr 5, 2016