I have recently been so inspired by the wealth of gems on the Nintendo Switch to start sharing some of my finds here. Now this will probably be another blog that infrequently updates and replaces my normal content (and believe it or not I have a fourth one planned), but since this is pretty much being shouted to the empty void of the universe anyway, who really cares!
So to inaugurate this new blog, I am picking my favorite go-to gem on the Switch, Enter the Gungeon. Now this is a game that is on a wealth of other systems (PS4, XBOX One, PC), but I think it is most aptly suited for the Switch. This is the perfect pick-up and put-down game, and it has been so dutifully and faithfully updated over the years since it has been released that it has evolved from a curiosity into a must-have for any system. This game is easily one of my top 25 all-time games. It is my stress relief game, my "I have 30 minutes to kill" game, and the ultimate Everest to try to topple. It is a game that has a little something for everybody, and will turn even the most neophyte gamer into that "get gud l33t" maverick.
What is it?
This game is a mash-up of so many genres, and it works! It is a twin stick shooter, bullet hell, rogue-lite, dungeon crawler, with platforming and RPG-lite progression. It has branching paths, optional levels, optional bosses, unlockables, secret endings, 100s of new guns, synergies, and the list goes on and one. This game is one of those games you can sink as little or as much time as you want into it, and still feel fulfilled in the end.Okay so here's the premise: you are a "Gungeoneer," a warrior with a troubled past who comes to the "Gungeon" in order to find a way to, literally, shoot the past in the face and change your life for the better. The "Gungeon" is a Giant bullet that has crashed into a planet and been turned into an ever-shifting, ever growing dungeon by a nefarious entity known as the Gun-Lich. Those who enter the gungeon are cursed to be trapped there until they can eventually "kill" their past, living and dying over and over again. To kill the past, the gungeoneer must make it to the depths of the Gungeon, make the "bullet that killed the past" out of materials on each level, slay the Dragun that guards the lowest level, and use the Gun that kills the past to send themselves back to the moment their personal history went awry. Now, it is practically impossible to do these goals all in one run, so you must loop over and over again, slowly amassing an arsenal of guns, unlocking people who can help you on your run, and learn the patterns of each and every enemy, mini-boss, trap, and boss that gets in your way.
It is a really rich world filled with a mythos that doesn't get in your way at all, but is played like a tongue and cheek Dark Souls where the lore is there to mystify and delight you if you look for it. As far as design, everything in this game revolves around guns; like literally, everything. Everything is made of guns, bullets, or some permutation of them. Think of Dungeons & Dragons but every NPC you come across is either a sentient bullet or is at least armed to the teeth with nefarious weapons.
Background
The amazing thing about this game is that it was a passion project of four employees who used to work for Mythic Entertainment. The game was designed by Dave Crooks, programmed by David Rubel and Brent Sodman. and the art was completed by Joe Harty. The music was composed by an indie hip-hop artist named Doseone.You can tell that there was a lot of tender, love, and care put into this project, as this game just oozes passion and charm. The detail work and complexity of this game is, simply put, astounding. There are layers upon layers of gameplay styles, choices for players to make on a room by room basis, and possible paths for the player to choose from at any given moment, and it never feels overwhelming or obtuse. I am putting this commendation in this segment because it is clear that this was all meticulously planned by the development team.
How do you play it?
Here is the standard gameplay loop of Enter the Gungeon.
1. You start in your hub area, known as the Breach. Here you can choose your character for your run: each gungeoneer has their own strengths and weaknesses and come with perks for your run. The Marine, for example, starts with an extra armor and has better aim, while the Pilot has poor aim, but is able to charm shopkeepers into lower prices and can pick locks. It is here you can also purchase items that might appear in later runs, access shortcuts you unlock, or continue NPC sidequests.
2. You enter the gungeon. In the base game, you start at the first level "The Keep of the Lead Lord." The layout of each level is completely randomized, with the player traveling through a series of "rooms" each having its own mix of enemies, traps, possible treasures, etc. Once the player enters a room, he is locked in until all enemies are defeated. Enemies can drop money (which in this case are spent shells), keys to open doors or chests, ammo for weapons aside from your base guns, health (which are Zelda style hearts), or even treasure chests.
3. On each floor there is always a shop, where you can purchase items if you have enough shells. There is also always a boss room at the end, and a guaranteed two chest room. There is usually one bonus room of some kind, this might take the form of a second vendor for goods, a statue that you can pray to for a buff/debuff, challenge rooms, mini-games, and usually at least two hidden rooms on each floor that have some sort of bonus. Now each of these types of rooms have their own variations as well. For example, sometimes the shop is well stocked; sometimes it is sparsely stocked. Sometimes, there are items in the store you can only afford if you rob the store. The treasure rooms, as well, might have a bomb that goes off and destroys the treasure after a certain time, or the chest might turn out to be a mimic that attacks you mercilessly.
Sometimes you will even find a key that drops from one of the enemies. This key is golden and winks at you. This is a key that unlocks a cell. This cell will contain an NPC who will then start to show up either in the breach or in the gungeon itself. Depending on the NPC, they might be another vendor, they might offer you a quest, or might even change gameplay as some of the later NPCs do.
4. Each floor ends with a boss. Now, this is a good time to talk about the gameplay itself. The gungeoneer has a base pistol and the ability to maneuver around the bullets, explosions, lasers, and projectiles that the enemies throw at him. The player is also able to dodge roll which, like Dark Souls, allows the player to jump through things that would otherwise damage them. Each enemy encounter, then, becomes the player delicately weaving through the various patterns of bullets and projectiles, dodge rolling where needed, and trying to consistently damage the enemies.
The bosses, though, are pure bullet hell sections. You have to consistently damage the boss while also dodging through hellacious patterns of bullets. The bosses start reasonably enough, but by the end of the game the boss fights can truly be brutal, with really sophisticated attack patterns, bullets filling the screen, and attack patterns that move at a blistering pace.
Once the boss is beaten, though, you are rewarded with a chest and HEGEMONY credits, which look like little Hs. The hegemony credits serve as your overall game currency, so that you can buy guns, shortcuts, or charms that will help with future runs back at the breach.
5. Advance to the next floor, rinse and repeat until you are killed or you defeat the Dragun on level 5. Once you die, you lose all your progress, get booted back to the Breach, and you have to start your run over again. None of your guns, charms, etc. come with you from run to run. You always start from square one.
Other little alterations or extras to the run...
A. There are secret bosses, secret levels, secret endings with secret bosses, so on and so forth. There is so much to explore.
B. The choices during runs are bountiful. Do you pick up that shotgun, even though it is cursed and can lead to more powerful endings? Do you use your keys to access the secret level on floor one, or do you save them for chests and other items down the road? Do you clear the entire floor, or do you beeline straight for the boss?
C. Eventually you can add challenges to each run by paying an NPC named Daisuke, or even switch the game to turbo mode to move the speed of bullets up. There is even a boss rush mode, and a speed run mode.
D. Recently added were synergies, which allows guns and artifacts of different types to give each other boosts depending on what else is in your inventory. It might be a damage boost, or change how a gun fires, or something even more unique. The crazy thing is that each gun or item has almost four or five different synergies.
High Points
- The music in this game is superb; like easily soundtrack of the year material.
- The art and design of the game is charming, from the happy-go-lucky bullets that make up the Cult of the Gundead, to the cartoonishly monstrous bosses, to the aesthetic and character of each floor of the Gungeon. It is a true world that the game creates, itself as much of a character as the person your player controls.
- The game has a great sense of humor. Each gun is a reference to another video game, movie, a well known gun from history, or just a random and crazy gun. You can play with Samus's gun arm, Mega Man's blaster, Earthworm Jim's gun, a gun that shoots Sail Boats, a paper airplane gun, a rock and a sling, and even the Cerebral Bore from Turok 2. The item descriptions are pretty damn funny too. My favorite is the "Nanomachines" item, which description simply reads "son."
- The game rewards perseverance and mastery. If you fight a boss without taking damage, you get a Master Shell, which adds another heart to your life, and can be used to open up shortcuts later. Most accomplishments in the game also reward you with guns or items. This extends to end-game content as well, with the "Past" bosses for each gungeoneer serving as tough super bosses (you get all your good guns stripped from you and your life returned to a smaller amount). There is even a true final boss in the form of the Gun Lich, who takes you to the true final area (aptly named Bullet Hell) after you kill the pasts of all the gungeoneers. Defeating him in a super hard final boss fight allows you to unlock a map of each gungeon.
- The variety and randomization is insane. Like I have not had two runs that were anywhere near each other in terms of how they were played or experiences. It really keeps me coming back to play it.
Extended Thoughts?
Well with some games I really like to break down the mechanics, and here I am going to focus on the first two levels themselves, and the boss fights by level. I think it will give you a good picture into the structure of the game.
Level 1: Keep of the Lead Lord
This level itself serves as a good introduction to the gameplay without blatantly telling you how to play the game. The enemy types and mixes per room are simple. You have the basic bullet enemies, perhaps some shotgun enemies, and a few middle of the road enemies, such as the Grenade enemies, or the Gun-Knuts (the giant Iron Knuckle looking enemies). There are little to no traps, very few pits to fall in, and generally a basic layout with few surprises.
Easy Boss- Bullet King: Each floor has an easy boss, middle of the road boss, and a super tough boss. You most often get the easy boss, sometimes get the middle boss, and rarely get the tough boss. The Bullet King is arguably the easiest. His attacks are all pattern based spread shots. He alternates through his attacks at generally set intervals, and just lazily floats around the room after you. He mainly teaches you how to maneuver these patterns, how to not get cornered by bosses, and basic DPS.
Medium Boss- Bullet Twins: These are two larger bulletkin who look like a good cop/bad cop. They both have basic attack patterns: one has a shotgun, the other an automatic pistol, and both will charge at you if you are far enough away. The challenge of this fight comes in the fact that they move and attack independently of each other, and at random. It is a basic fight to teach you adaptability. It gets complicated further when they summon smaller bulletkin, as well as go into an enrage mode when the other dies.
Hard Boss- Gatling Gull: Basically a giant roid-rage crow carrying a Gatling Gun. I love this guy, but he doesn't really fit the aesthetic of the rest of the game. He is consistently the toughest boss of the first level, as he is a mix of patterns and randomness. His biggest challenge is that he is constantly trying to corner you. He will move towards you and blast at you with his gatling gun, either putting his bullets out in an even spread, or shooting them completely in random directions. If he corners you, you are practically guaranteed to take damage. Now the other two bosses you can get away without using the dodge roll, but this fight requires you to have at least a working knowledge of how to implement the maneuver. To spice things up, the Gull will also fire missiles at you, and other forms of projectiles as well.
Level 2: Gungeon Proper
This is where the game throws a proper "dungeon" at you. It is challenging, but not overwhelmingly so, and the game adds the layers that will be consistent through the rest of the game. Now you have a thorough mix of various types of enemies, ranging from small grunts up to mid-boss enemies. You also have rooms that have various traps and pitfalls ready to be unleashed on the unsuspecting gungeoneer, and there are now plenty of pits to dodge roll into. This is where the game will also start giving you choices. Do you sacrifice a life to gain shells from the blood vampire? Do you pray at the altar and raise your curse so that you can gain an extra shield? Do you conserve your ammo for your special guns for the boss, or do you use it to breeze through the floor? This is where the game really rears its ugly face with its more intense gameplay.
Easy Boss- Gorgun: This is a medusa wannabe with two uzis. She is actually easier than the gatling gull and the bullet twins in my opinion. More like a second refresher to be honest, but she throws in some new tricks. She can give you status affects: poison and stone, which are relatively new. She also has a full on desperation move at set points in the fight, where she will unleash a web of bullets around her and you have to carefully weave through them.
Medium Boss- Beholster: Another riff off a classic D&D monster, the Beholster is a master class in juggling multiple attacks at once. The Beholster throws a lot at you, and forces you to DPS your way through the fight. He is a very big run-ender boss. He has a large spread laser you HAVE to dodge roll through, homing missiles you have to shoot down, adds that will harass you as well, and smaller projectiles too. It is an intense, but fast paced fight.
Hard Boss- Ammoconda: This boss is the toughest so far, but not unmanageable. He is a snake who can fire projectiles from any of his segments. He moves around the room randomly, and will constantly fire off a pattern of some time. I found this boss really hard until I realized that each attack is based off something "snake-like;" one attack moves like the snakes from the video game of the same name, another "falls" like shed skin from the snake, and floats towards you. This fight is all about constant movement and mobility, and more than any fight before it, giving constant DPS. This is the first boss that can replenish its health by eating his little cronies, so you have to deal constant damage.
Now the rest of the game follows a similar formula. Each level ramps up the difficulty from the previous, and the fifth level only has one boss. Now this layout can be changed, as you later have the ability to start at different levels. The drawback here is that you start with only one special gun that usually is terrible. You can also elect to go to the special stages as well (of which there are now FOUR) in the game.
Verdict
Please play this game! So good! Like really really good.
