This article originally ran under a different banner/website in August of 2018 and is now being here re-uploaded for purposes of convenience and consolidation. Please enjoy.
Pssst! Over here. Ladies and Gentlemen, I have been in hiding ever since I obtained the Infinity Gauntlet and decided to protect it from greedy publishers. That is not why I am in this dark dingy alleyway. I am lurking in the shadows because I think Devolver Digital is following me. I don’t believe they are after the gauntlet. They would probably only use it to make everyone’s E3 presentation as ridiculous as their own. No, I think Devolver Digital is watching me. Listening to me as I play games. They might have bugged the cardboard box that I live in. I have been onto them ever since they announced an expansion to Enter the Gungeon after I wrote about how I wasn’t enjoying I Hate Running Backwards. This could be their way of saying “Oh you didn’t like one of our games, please let’s give you a reason to try another…another roguelite in fact.” I shudder at the thought. With that in mind, I burnt down my cardboard and been moving from Starbucks to Starbucks, hoping to lose Devolver Digital. I usually spend about half an hour at a Starbucks before moving onto the next one, which gave me plenty of time to get a few rounds of Enter the Gungeon in. I guess stalking me seems to be an effective strategy to get me to play your games.
With a ridiculous opening depicting a story of a temple built around a gun that can kill the past, we see what Enter the Gungeon is about: leaning hard into the initial pun. Enter the Gungeon has an obsession with guns that would put the NRA to shame. Everything Enter the Gungeon has to offer is baked in gun-related puns. From the basic enemies being a bullet to a boss being a minigun wielding bird; Enter the Gungeon fully commits to the joke. By sticking the landing and going all in, they don’t let the joke get stale. From the start of the game, you have your choice of characters to play as including the Marine, the Pilot, the Convict, and the Hunter. While I tried all the different gungeoneers, I preferred the Hunter because she is accompanied by a small little corgi who will sniff out treasure for you including ammo packs, chests with new guns, and of course hearts shaped like bullets representing health.
Keeping with the theme, Enter the Gungeon is a bullet hell game. When you enter a room and enemies will start shooting at you. The shots will appear as red orbs as they fly across the screen. Along with sidestepping the shots, you can over turntables to create cover and create environmental kills with objects like explosive barrels, lit braziers, and hanging chandeliers. You can also dodge roll to avoid getting hit as you are invulnerable in the first few frames of the roll. If cover and dodge rolls aren’t an option, you are equipped with a blank that when fired, will destroy all bullets on screen. All these elements combine to create the firefight feel you could only receive from being John Wick. While one might think that constant firefights would get old, especially with Enter the Gungeon being one of those roguelites I dread, Enter the Gungeon is able to shake off the shackles that tie down most other roguelikes by making the varied runs unique and exciting.
Now I always railed against roguelites for constantly killing their players over and over again. While Enter the Gungeon doesn’t remove that, it softens the blow by making the combat enjoyable and having a ludicrous amount of guns and items. I cannot recall two runs where I received the exact same items and guns. Every run turns out to be different. One run I’ll have a gamma-ray gun, another a gun that shoots fish, another a gun is a frog that shoots bubbles, and another that fires ships that bounce off the walls. The wide variety the combat allowed me to forget that each level was randomly generated, but not enough to distract me from the fact that each room on the levels looks like they belong next to the other rooms. The first level usually resembles parlors and libraries, but venture into deeper levels and they will start to resemble dungeons. My personal favorite thing Enter the Gungeon does that sets itself ahead of other roguelites is when you die, you are given the option to jump right back into the action or head back to the entrance of the gungeon to choose a different gungeoneer or spend the currency you gain from defeating bosses. I truly wish more roguelites would do this cause it allows me to keep the pace up when smashing my head into the wall keeping me from the next level. At this point you may have noticed, I did not mention how the difficulty curves yet. While I did not play Enter the Gungeon on release, I was informed the game was pretty brutal. Luckily with the Gungeon and Draguns update, I can say the difficulty curve has been smoothed out.
From the whispers that I have heard from the other hobos, not gaining a new gun on the first level was pretty common when Enter the Gungeon first released. As someone who has experienced a couple of runs without receiving a new gun, I can concur that combating bosses with peashooters can be a chore. Luckily, the Gungeons and Draguns update not only adds more bosses, minions, and weapons but the chance of receiving a new gun earlier has also been increased. A change that I welcome, as I believe the starting guns aren’t that enjoyable. The sooner the game can give you a gun that fires t-shirts, the more enjoyable game becomes, the more times I am willing to slam that restart level button upon death. While I wish the update made it so your co-op partner was more than just a sidekick and the controller controls were better, I am still thankful the difficulty curve has been smoothed out. Enter the Gungeon and the Gungeon and Draguns update showed me that roguelites are a balancing act. A bit too easy or too difficult and players won’t return to your game. Thankfully, Enter the Gungeons hits the sweet spot, and I am finding the bite-size nature of it quite enjoyable when I am constantly on the run. Speaking of which, look at the time, I need to move positions. If you see me at the Starbucks, know that I’ll be trying to get that gun kill that kills the past. Hmm, that does sound pretty useful right now. Maybe, just maybe.