![]() ![]() And STRAFE owes most of its good bits to getting the 90s-shooter “feel” just right with its technical achievements and aesthetic. This game is a fast-paced blood bath shooter that has all the glee and color of its hyper-violence and alien world clashed in stark contrast against the grey backdrop of its future science corporation. As you progress, you realize this space station has crash landed on an alien planet and that the alien invasion is already taking place on earth and it’s your job to get back to the source of the invasion and kill everything along the way before putting an end to things. Set in an unknown time, you’re the lonely grunt soldier hired by a company to jump into a teleporter and be whisked off to what appears to be a space station gone very wrong. The enemies are a mixture of zombie-like workers, Strogg-like aliens, antlions from Half-Life 2, particle-spewing wall-barnacles, and the exploding monsters from Dead Space. It takes cues from Quake, DOOM, and Half-Life 1 with all the respect it can muster. “STRAFE” sets off to be a retro-90s era first-person shooter at heart, a game that would’ve existed in 1998 if the technology for it existed back then. It’s a game with a lot of exciting and wild things it wants to do, but fails at a few too many things that are too rudimentary and fundamental. It’s agonizingly sad to see a game with the heart and love put into it (and actively being worked on still) that Pixel Titans have and know that the game just…didn’t work out in the ways that “Enter the Gungeon” and “Crypt of the Necrodancer” have. A very similarly designed rhythm game also came out in 2016 called “Crypt of the Necrodancer” that I’m really looking forward to trying out and possibly never beating as well.Īnd then there’s “STRAFE”, a first-person shooter taking design elements from rogue-likes as well that I do not want to keep playing despite my incredibly-close push for the finish line because it seems to have missed the target on taking rogue-like designs and implementing them into a fast-paced action game that is meant to be replayed over and over again. And that’s why I’ve easily wasted 36 hours playing Enter the Gungeon. It’s digestible and wonderful and simply put: A blast. This game is unabashedly fun and exciting and manages to be challenging without being too frustrating that I’m happy to waste an hour watching some videos and playing the game for a few quick attempts before leaving for work. ![]() There’s even a gun that shoots guns that spin towards their destination and shoot out small bullets at the bullet enemies in the process. Those are your primary enemies in this game. This game is a blast, I love it, it’s a great style and funny approach. You have to be really good at collecting the in-dungeon currency to grab very important unlocks or weapons if they show up. There’s problems with the odds being stacked against your favor too easily in the first two dungeons without a decent roll in the player’s favor to give them stronger weaponry to beat later levels. The elements the game takes from rogue-likes isn’t quite perfect. Never having beaten it isn’t really bugging me because every play is something that heightens my ability and knowledge required to finish the game. This turns Enter the Gungeon into an incredibly good, quick, and digestible rompus of fun. The odds are heavily against your favor, which can be frustrating and debilitating except for the fact that the game is only five levels long and each level can be cleared in about 8 minutes. This info is relevant because Gungeon is absolutely engaging and has designs that should eventually help the player beat the game with enough time in it. Bosses are pooled from a set of potential picks for each layer of the gungeon. ![]() The game is five levels deep, with each level increasing in depth and difficulty and a boss at the end of each level. Rogue-likes have a lot of different elements to them but the elements Gungeon uses in particular are randomized dungeons and unlocking different shopkeepers that you can pay with collectible currency to boost your runs through the game. Late last year I grabbed myself a copy of “Enter the Gungeon”, a poppy fun schmup rogue-like game that I’ve spent over 35 hours playing and yet I’ve never actually beat it. ![]()
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