The Impact Factor

Gungeonological Expedition

Review

Enter the Gungeon, Dodge Roll Games (PS4)

Abstract: Enter the Gungeon is a punishingly difficult and thoroughly rewarding dungeon crawling shooter roguelike from Dodge Roll games. A wonderful setting and charming aesthetic compliment a stellar gameplay experience that is as expertly crafted as it comes. Nuanced balance of player skill with randomness, risk-reward scenarios, and managing finite resources work together to make each run in Enter the Gungeon a thrilling experience. Issues centering around enemy health scaling detracted from my enjoyment, but thankfully no issue is too severe. Enter the Gungeon is a game to get lost in, and a worthy one at that. Enter the Gungeon is fantastic.

Enter the Gungeon from Dodge Roll games asks the big questions. What lengths would you go to in order to rectify your past mistakes? Do you have the fortitude to make it through a grueling dungeon? Why are your anthropomorphic bullet enemies so dang cute? Ok, so maybe Enter the Gungeon isn’t some profound exploration into morality and the human psyche. What it is, though, in a finely tuned and expertly crafted game about guns, dodging, dungeon crawling and secrets. It is also pretty phenomenal.

I was pulled into Enter the Gungeon’s world almost instantly. A brief cutscene at the beginning of the game invites players into the game’s fantastical world. Long ago, a giant bullet fell from the sky: a cavernous, alien structure filled with shifting floors and hidden secrets. A gun worshiping cult built up around the monument. Legends tell of a gun that can be found at the heart of the labyrinthine “gungeon” that has the ability to kill the past. A party of four intrepid misfits seek to conquer the gungeon and make their way to its core—the alleged resting place of the legendary gun. Hoping to undo past transgressions,  the four playable characters (a thieving pilot, a stern marine, a orange jumpsuit-wearing convict and a crossbow-wielding hunter) each has their own motivations to make it through the brutal and deadly descent.

Serious premise aside, however, Enter the Gungeon is a game that revels in absolute absurdity. That cult devoted to protecting the secrets of the gungeon? Most are anthropomorphic bullets. Adorable, bizarre, anthropomorphic bullets. One boss you can come across is a bipedal raven with ripped abs and a gattling gun. Another is a giant cannonball with a face. All have pun-based names. The gungeon itself acts as the center for all things guns, almost like a black hole. During your exploration you’ll find modern weapons like an M1911 or .44 Magnum, sci-fi weapons like the laser rifle, and then crazy weapons like a barrel gun that shoots fish, or a mailbox that kills with letters and packages. You’ll even find guns that reference other media dimensions, like the hilariously bad Klobbe from Goldeneye. All guns and enemies work together to create an endearing lightness, a playfulness, to Enter the Gungeon. It’s fun getting absorbed into its goofy world. It is colorful, it’s cheerful, and it’s great.

 

Welcome to the gungeon.

Enter the Gungeon, like a lot of the titles I review here, is a game with a lot of descriptors. Being as specific as I can here: Enter the Gungeon is a 2D dungeon crawling twin stick shooter bullet-hell roguelike. Naturally, the game’s genre-synthetic nature draws a lot of quick comparisons. It’s like Zelda, with guns. It’s like Nuclear Throne or The Binding of Isaac. But Enter the Gungeon is very much its own game. As a roguelike, play sessions in Enter the Gungeon are broken up into ‘runs.’ Each time you boot up the game you need to enter the procedurally generated gungeon and begin your exploration from the start. The gungeon is divided into five main floors, with two optional floors and one secret sixth floor. Starting from the spawn location, you’re tasked with exploring the floor room by room. If a room has enemies in it, you need to kill them before moving on. Combat uses mechanics from both twin stick shooters (you move with the left stick, aim with the right) and bullet hells (you need to skillfully dodge lots of enemy projectiles). On each floor is a boss that needs to be defeated before moving down to the next floor. Contained within each floor are a bevy of goodies: from friendly NPCs, to shops, to hidden rooms, to gun or item containing treasure chests. You die and you’re sent back to the Breach, a hub area in which you can select a different character or interact with NPCs you’ve rescued from the gungeon in previous runs. And then you start another run.

The gungeon calls to you. Just one more run.

Describing a playthough of Enter the Gungeon is difficult because there is a lot that goes into it. Enter the Gungeon is a complex game. Each character, though mostly similar, starts with a few unique bonuses. The Marine, for example, comes equipped with an item that improves accuracy as well as a one-time use item that summons ammo for your equipped gun. The Hunter starts with a powerful crossbow and a dog companion that can sniff out hidden items. Each time you play you’ll need to balance a few resources. Health, of course, is limited and can only be restored with items randomly found in the gungeon. Keys are used to unlock doors and treasure chests, but again, are only found sparingly. A third resource is the ‘blank,’ a consumable item that pushes nearby enemies away and destroys all projectiles on the screen. It’s a hugely important part of playing Enter the Gungeon. As you progress you’ll have even more to manage. Guns found throughout the gungeon have limited amounts of ammunition. Once used, it’s gone. Active use items can be found as well, some one-time use and others with a cooldown timer. And finally you have your currency, bullet casings, that can be used to buy items on the shop that’s guaranteed to be on each floor. But what do you buy? Keys? Health? Blanks? A cool looking item? Nearly everything in Enter the Gungeon comes with some risk to its reward, and the balance is smart. 

Speaking of smart, Enter the Gungeon is incredibly well-designed. Moment to moment gameplay is effortlessly enthralling. Enter the Gungeon is punishingly difficult. You’re going to die. A lot. But the player is given the tools to succeed. To mitigate the often nauseating amount of enemy projectiles on the screen, the player has several options. Movement is 1:1 with the controller, ensuring that for better or worse, it is the player’s fault when they mess up their dodge. The player also has an invincible dodge roll, essential for the tight spots you so often find yourself in. And then you have the blank, a.k.a. the get out of jail free card. Tackling each enemy-filled room is a chaotic whirlwind, a dance of dodges and bullets. Enter the Gungeon is great at getting the player into a zen-like state in which you’re not thinking or trying, you’re just doing. Firing your guns feels great, with perfect sound effects and screen shake to let the player know just how powerful your arsenal really is. Bosses evoke dread, followed by elation when you down your terrifying foe. Exploration is addictive and always rewarded. Even the tiniest quality of life design choices shine through. For example, when in combat your minimap disappears from the screen so not to obscure your vision, and fades back in once all enemies are defeated. You can instantly start a new run with the press of a button, even from the game’s boot up sequence. Each of the 200+ guns and dozens of enemies has an interesting description in the game’s encyclopedia, the Ammonomicon, which adds to the game’s universe. From big to small, from important to minor, Enter the Gungeon is a brilliantly designed experience.

 

Shoot, loot, and manage your limited resources as you make your
way deeper into the gungeon.

Not every design choice worked for me, unfortunately. Runs in Enter the Gungeon are just a bit too long. From start to finish a successful run is about 45 minutes to an hour long. When you die at the end of a long run it feels pretty awful. Quicker time to completion would reduce some of the sourness that results from ‘wasting’ 50 minutes because of a stupid mistake. One way to solve this problem, and another core issue of mine, is enemy health. As you progress deeper into the gungeon all enemies gain more health. A basic bulletkin enemy that took 4 shots to kill on the first floor can take ten to kill on the fourth. They are no harder to defeat because their attack patterns remain the same—they’re simply more tedious. The health issue can be mitigated by finding powerful weapons throughout the gungeon, but that itself poses more problems. It seems obvious that Enter the Gungeon wants you to stop using your basic weapons by floor 3 or so. “Good” runs can feel totally dependent on finding some of the game’s best weapons. Stuck on the fourth floor with only your basic pistol and a few trash weapons because you got unlucky with drops? You’re probably better off restarting. This is an issue I’ve had with other item build-based roguelike games. Player skill is still the most important part of a successful run, sure, but the game can feel unfairly punishing when you don’t get a good enough item setup. When a game is brutally tough and feels unfair, it’s generally a bad combination. Thankfully, for the most part, these issues did not impact my enjoyment too significantly (and could be fixed with a patch!).

 

These enemies aren't hard to kill, but man oh man can they take some
time to kill. It can be a headache on the later floors.

For a game about killing your past, Enter the Gungeon sure has left me with so many cherished memories. Like the time I took out the first three bosses flawless when using the Beehive weapon. Or the time my fightsabre weapon reflected the Treadnaught boss’s missile project back at him for the kill. Or the edge of my seat tension I felt trying to preserve my one piece of armor in order to access the Abbey of the True Gun hidden level. The list goes on and on. The emergent stories that come out of playing Enter the Gungeon are endless and fantastic. They also add to your growing sense of progress the more you play. Freeing trapped NPCs in the gungeon fills up the Breach-making it go from hollow and empty to a place bristling with vibrancy and life. Even though I’ve ‘beaten’ the game, I can’t stop thinking about going back for more. There are still so many secrets to uncover, special challenges to topple. Heck, I still need to finish building the bullet to kill the past! I have played for over 40 hours and I see no signs of stopping. Enter the Gungeon has me trapped in its shifting corridors and I don’t want to leave.

 

I don't want to forget my amazing runs. Thankfully, I don't think I will be able to.

Finally, Enter the Gungeon is a sight to behold. The pixel art graphics are stellar. Character and enemy animations alike are hilariously rich and detailed. Objects can be destroyed all throughout the environment, leaving ashes and papers and bullets and bodies strewn throughout the map. And that theme song! It’s great!

Usually my review is the end of a journey. I’ve played the game start to finish and coalesced my thoughts here. But that isn’t that case for Enter the Gungeon. I feel like I have only just begun my journey. I’ve finished the first chapter, but there is an entire opus waiting for me to dive into. Enter the Gungeon is an impressive package, a phenomenal game, and an experience I’m not likely to forget. The game’s four gungeoneers may want to kill their past, but all I want is for Enter the Gungeon to be a part of my future. Leave me down in the gungeon. I’m happy there.

Enter the Gungeon

4/5