Enter the Gungeon (Bullet Hell/Rogue-like)

[Wingflier]

A game was recently released on Steam with a 95% approval rating. It is being described as "A mix between Nuclear Throne and Binding of Isaac".

I was never a big fan of Binding of Isaac, but I did really like Starward Rogue, and the idea of a procedurally generated Nuclear Throne sound feckin epic beyond words.

I'm thinking about getting this.

*Calling all Miserys*

[Draco18s]

*Calling all Miserys*

There's more than one!?

*Runs for the hills.*

More seriously, I was asked about it the other day.  I had seen it on the store page, but hadn't looked at it at the time.  Looks like some of the bosses are really interesting (a giant slime that shoots out collections of bullets shaped like giant slimes?  Hot damn).

[crazyroosterman]

I've been following the game since before its release in fact I was just about to put something like this up here but since when I do they generally end up turning into first impressions then I'm glad you did it first wing btw I also saw in total biscuits stream of it that there's a boss that's a

Spoiler for Hiden:

giant bird wielding a Gatling gun

now that's pretty cool if you ask me.

[Misery]

I haven't played it yet.  I'd actually intended on getting it, but surprise, forgot it exists, at least until you posted this topic.

I may as well go buy it and give it a try while I'm thinking about it, no reason not to.  I'll post impressions of it afterwards.

[Misery]

Okay, for some initial thoughts here....  I'm going to copy-pasta something that I said in the Steam forums, in a thread where someone was complaining about the early game (you know, one of those threads where the only defense people can come up with is "git gud", so I supported his argument).

Copy-pastaaaaaa:


I think the game is pretty easy... I'm used to games WAY harder than this, being a huge fan and longtime player of full bullet-hell games (Mushihime-sama on Ultra Mode, for instance, sadly mostly the 360 version...), but I'm already finding that he's right about this.

I havent even had all that much time with the game (had to stop not all that far into my first playthrough) but even right away, alot of the first area was uninteresting, and the game seems like it's drop rates on *everything* didn't get even the tiniest bit of testing. Keys for instance? I dont even know if they CAN drop. If you like BUYING all of your damn keys, this is the game for you! I quickly took to just not really bothering to worry about locked chests. This of course could potentially change over time as I keep playing, but something tells me that's not going to happen.

Ammo? Hahahahaha no. I dont seem to go through ammo all that fast because I keep just using the basic gun anyway, because bah, but I saw *one* ammo drop that whole time, and something tells me I got lucky to see one at all.

Money? Good grief, how are you supposed to buy anything in this? I dont really NEED the stuff in the shop (they dont seem to sell all that much in the way of interesting things anyway), not anything that isnt a key anyway, but still, the game gives you almost half of one credit maybe sort of possibly, every now and then. I'd like to have at least the OPTION of buying something sometimes.

All of that just combines with the overly slow pacing, and I'm not a very patient individual to begin with.



There, that's the end of the copy pasta.



The game has a lot of interesting mechanics, but... it's almost like a Vlambeer situation all over again.  Where I get the impression that they just refused to make balance changes during testing or listen to complaints.  I mean, you're going to go through most areas *just* shooting things, not doing anything interesting or making meaningful choices (because there's nothing to choose from; it's all locked in chests that you need non-existent keys to open!).

I have a hard time recommending the game in it's current state.  The balance just seems like it's a disaster.  Again, I haven't had much time with it, but I tend to find that my first impressions usually stay as my long-term impressions with games of this genre.

Unless they make some big changes, that is.   I'm going to keep playing for awhile and see what happens.

[Misery]

Okay, after a bit more time with it, well.... ehh, I've already lost interest to be honest.

The game's pacing is *really* bad.  Think "Isaac when you have super-low damage", except ALL THE TIME.  It's not that things take too long to kill... well, to an extent they kinda do... it's just that nothing is INTERESTING, yet all of it takes forever.

But then... there's the reload mechanic.   Yes, I get that these are guns.  Great.  Super.  That doesn't mean that this arbitrary and stupid mechanic needs to be in there.  You can only fire a limited number of shots, and then you must reload, very slowly.  This doesn't seem to have ANY effect on the game's challenge level, it *just* makes it take forever.  It's one of those "why is this even here?" sorts of things.  Just... uuuugh.  I cant remember the last time I hated a game mechanic in this genre so much.

Also:  dodge rolls.  I hate dodge rolls.  It's a mechanic I've never liked in any game that uses them.  I seem to recall that Chris had similar thoughts on this mechanic, which fortunately caused this type of thing to NOT be in Starward.  Just... ugh.  It's hard to explain WHY I don't like it, but I don't.

For the time being, I'm already done with it.  I might actually do a refund on this one, which I normally never do.

[crazyroosterman]

huu that's pretty damming although its something I was afraid of that there would be balance problems not noticed by people ogling over the aesthetic

btw I think from what I've seen that it will be genuine fun to people who aren't as madly into rogue likes like misery or some of the other gentlemen here but personally although I've been following the game for a while I don't think ill be getting into in till some one here convinces me otherwise

I think Id rather just play star ward rogue which when you look at the gameplay loop and body of it is actually quite similar besides at the moment I've been mad into hyper light drifter and wouldn't have the time for gungeon anyway.

[Wingflier]

^That paragraph could use some commas.

Anyway, I find it a bit surprising that Misery was so disenamored with the game. It's got a 95% approval rating on Steam.

I went and checked some of the (relatively few) negative reviews and they were vastly similar to the things Misery was saying. Very few resources, high chance of getting screwed over by RNG (bad or no drops etc.), very little in the way of health drops, often having to fight bosses with your starting weapons, and apparently there's a lot of grinding to unlock new weapons.

I'm not really sure how that works exactly, given that most of these games start you with a pistol, but yeah that's a common complaint.

Perhaps the majority of the playerbase doesn't mind the slower pace of the unlocks/rare drops because they are getting used to the game anyway, or to them the pace seems fine. Though I could see how to Misery that sort of thing would be frustrating to the max. I'll probably still buy it and try it.

[Misery]

Eh, the approval rating means little to me, it's pretty darn often that I completely loathe something that has a high approval rating.  Like AAA games, people absolutely will rate things high if it's full of graphical shininess and cutscenes, even if they then say the actual gameplay is "mediocre".  As it always has, this continues to baffle me.


For Gungeon though, I get the feeling that more than a few players aren't exactly genre veterans.  I might think more highly of the game myself, if I hadn't already played so very, very many better games that very easily avoid the issues that one has.

In an overall sense, mostly, it's just a boring game.  I've played so many of these, but not even one is as repetitive as this one is.  Considering the very good fast-travel system it has for getting around the dungeon... that really says a lot about it.

It's the sort of thing where I just say... why in the world wouldn't I just play Isaac, or whatever?  This game does nothing at all new, but it's MISSING tons of stuff, and what it DOES do, it doesn't do very well.   And I do get the feeling that more effort was put into the visuals (very unnecessarily detailed) than the gameplay, honestly.

So yeah, just... feh.  I'll get rid of it and get something else instead.   Or at least I would, if there was something else interesting to buy right now, which there really isn't.


EDIT:   Oh, and the bit about the pistol:  Yes, other games always start you with a weak weapon.  ....but they never leave you with just that for very long at all, as most devs know that is boring. You're going to get at least a couple of items pretty quick as a rule.   But this?  Every time I played it, I went the first TWO floors without finding a new gun.  Though, I might have, if it had given me some damn keys.

And the pistol might not be as awful if it weren't for that horrible reload mechanic.  Really, I hate it when developers stick in mechanics that just genuinely aren't necessary.

[Wingflier]

I read that there were 5 different characters all with a different starting weapon/abilities.

[Misery]

Yeah, from what I've seen though they're all pretty much equally terrible/slow.

If you want to get somewhere, you need to get a better weapon.  Which it isn't likely to give you anytime soon.

Didn't care for the different characters/classes, really.

[Wingflier]

It's interesting, I ran the game 3 times and didn't run into any of the problems you seem to be having.

Each level I got at least one new gun, and usually a passive perk or activatible item as well. Each level I found 2-3 items. Keys weren't that hard to come by, and they weren't that expensive to buy either, in my experience.

So far I've probably seen 10 guns and never encountered the same gun twice. A lot of...creativity on the part of the designers. I haven't decided if that's good or bad. For example there's a gun that shoots...letters of the alphabet and a gun that shoots snowballs, and those are probably some of the more tame things in the game. Like I said, they definitely didn't skimp on the creativity.

Luckily I haven't run into any useless weapons yet. For example there was a "disc gun" I discovered that went through enemies, ricochet off walls, then hit the same enemies again (potentially several times). Overall it was pretty fun to use. However, it reminded me of the disc gun in Nuclear Throne which is a useless piece of dogshit trash that shouldn't have been in the game. For one thing, the blades could bounce back and kill you instantly, that on its own made the gun incredibly dangerous to use, and it didn't even do that much damage to begin with. Just totally useless. Even the Super Disc Gun launcher you occasionally found later in the game wasn't any better. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE Nuclear Throne (242 hours on record), but some of the guns were unforgivably bad (even taking their tier into consideration).

The best thing about EtG is definitely the feel. They certainly put a long time into the pixelated art and animations of the game. The sound effects are top notch and the soundtrack is a nice addition as well. "Feel" is one of the intangible joys of any kind of game. Though it's probably the most shallow aspect of game design, it's also potentially the most important. The design of any given game can be spectacular, innovative, and genre-redefining, but if it feels mediocre, the game may still flop. Likewise, if a game feels great but only involves a bunch of mindless grinding, it may still succeed. What can I say? We live in a very aesthetic world.

Anyway, Enter the Gungeon has several advantages over a game like Binding of Isaac (and even Starward Rogue). For one thing, you don't have to waste time after clearing rooms destroying poop/rocks/crates, etc. and searching for goodies. Pretty much all the useful items and money appear at the end of the room clear, saving you a lot of time. I didn't realize how much of a blessing that was until I noticed how much time I wasn't wasting looking for items, coins, and keys instead of staying in the action.

Also the teleport mechanic is a nice addition, definitely saves some time as well traveling across floors when you need to go all the way to the other side, or pick up an item (say a heart) that you didn't need at the time, but needed later.

As far as the enemies, they seem varied enough to me. At least they seem just as numerous and/or interesting as anything I've seen in Binding of Isaac. You run into many of the same opponents over and over again in that game too, so I'm not sure I see the problem there either.

Overall I have no major complaint about the game. Granted, it doesn't overwhelm you with items like Binding of Isaac, but the items you do get (like I said, about 2-3 per floor in my experience) make a big impact on your run. I have no problem with that. Quality over quantity.

It feels great, it's clearly a labor of love, and it seems to live up to its reputation as the grotesque and brutal deformed baby of Nuclear Throne and Binding of Isaac. I've only played an hour but I can already tell I'm going to have a lot of fun with this one.

[Misery]

Hmm...

That all suggests to me that the RNG must be *really* all over the place.

Looking back on Steam, yeah, I'm seeing some of that... some are saying what I'm saying, that the game never gives you anything or whatever, others are saying "I don't see where you're finding that problem, it's drowning me in items!".

A game like this really needs to hit a good middle point between those two in order to really work.

Though, in all honesty... just that reload mechanic alone would kill it for me.  I seriously cant even overstate how much I hate that one mechanic.  I end up just thinking "You know, if I just played Nuclear Throne instead, I wouldn't have to do this reload thing". 

For enemy counts, right now, Isaac definitely trumps this one.  Trumps Starward, too, and that game is stuffed with whatever the hell we could come up with at random.   There are certain very, very specific enemies that sometimes feel like you're seeing them too much in Isaac (maggots, spiders), but other than that... there is no game in this genre that is more varied in it's enemy selection.  In Gungeon here, I can remember... exactly 8 enemies in the first couple of floors.  Just 8. Walking bullet, other walking bullet that fired faster, obnoxious rolling grenade thing, book, teleport jerk, and what I think was some sort of ghost. And then the only one that seemed genuinely interesting was that Iron Maiden thing that fired those big needles that stop, turn, and come after you.

Granted, Nuclear Throne has a very similar issue (low enemy count, uninteresting attacks that they use), so that one isn't much better in this particular regard.  Though, it gets around creating an issue with it by applying sheer ridiculous chaos to the whole thing.  Creates more difficulty that way too; with Gungeon I was in "this is too easy, kinda bored" territory really fast.

The bit about "feel" goes completely over my head.  I don't notice that in basically everything.  These could seriously look like something on the Atari 2600 for all I care.  I play a lot of those, actually...

The one thing I DID like in this was the teleport thing, but...

In the end, that reload mechanic is all that ended up mattering.  Seriously, I find it THAT annoying.  I know I'm negative as all hell, but I cant remember the last time I found a single mechanic in a game to be that freakishly irritating.

[Wingflier]

Just a personal preference, but the reloading mechanic doesn't bother me.

For one thing, Nuclear Throne certainly DOES have a reloading mechanic. Except in some ways it's even more annoying because it doesn't always tell you when you're about to run out of ammo. The starting pistol just seems to stop firing at random intervals while your character reloads, which is annoying to no end. Many of the weapons in NT reload between shots, so there's still a reload. Some of the weapons (Super Plasma Gun comes to mind) have a MASSIVE reload time, though it can be lowered with perks. In fact, if I recall correctly, the entire theme of Yung Venuz was trading higher frontloaded burst damage for longer reload times. So it was definitely in there.

Enter the Gungeon isn't all the different. The starting pistol has a reload time, and so do many of the other weapons, but some weapons only reload a short time between shots, and I've already encountered several weapons which have no reload at all (continuous fire until you run out).

I also think of the reloading mechanic in EtG as adding tactical value to the game. You hide behind walls while you reload, or flip over tables to give you cover for that extra couple seconds. It's pretty neat.

One other advantage of EtG is that you seem to be able to hold unlimited weapons (probably one of the reasons they don't have an obscene drop rate), so technically you don't even have to reload in a fight, you can just keep switching between guns until you clear out a room, then reload between combats. Once again, I simply see it as adding a layer of strategy to the game, not holding it back in some arbitrary way.

And yes, the "feel" of the game is an extremely subjective (and socially driven) intangible aspect of game design. To some people it may make little difference, and to others it may make all the difference. However, I think it's safe to say that they got the feel right, at least for the average person, as the game is the third top seller on Steam right now which is quite an accomplishment.

[Draco18s]

A game like this really needs to hit a good middle point between those two in order to really work.

Ah that problem.
Yes.
Marking myself as "uninterested until that's fixed."