Some video games shock you with a novel premise that lends itself completely to interactivity, while others take a tried and examined thought and refine it. Squirrel With a Gun doesn’t match with both STYLE, as an alternative being a jokey meme at coronary heart however one which leads to a surprisingly gratifying sport. It might not attain the heights of the likes of Untitled Goose Recreation however it’s excess of the 5 minute gag that I initially anticipated. Coming throughout like a fusion of Postal 2 and Goat Simulator, what outcomes is a 3rd particular person stealth platformer motion sport that mixes and fuses genres to create a flawed however enjoyable expertise.
The opening couple of minutes of the sport see you attempting to come back to grips with the ridiculously floaty leaping controls of the titular rodent. This isn’t the very best introduction to the sport, as your critter is a clumsy little sod and also you’ll end up lacking seemingly simple jumps till it clicks. Even whenever you develop into accustomed to the controls they by no means actually work as they need to and never in a enjoyable clumsy method.
Luckily the vast majority of the sport doesn’t require the precision of this early tutorial so perseverance is rewarded by a extra gratifying set of mechanics. When you navigate the sequence of platforms and press quite a few switches you unlock the primary main collectable – a golden acorn. Swallowing this entire units off an alarm and a mysterious agent clad in a flawless swimsuit bursts into the room. It’s right here that you just first decide up a pistol and the sport begins in earnest.
There isn’t any backstory as to why your squirrel begins the sport in a safe facility or how he takes to gunplay fairly so readily, however some clues are hinted at by means of the antagonists which are launched within the type of boss fights after the 2 predominant hub areas are unlocked. Progress requires you to gather a sure variety of golden acorns, and the extra widespread foreign money model, in an effort to unlock talents. The primary of those is a distant managed automotive that lets you zip across the ranges, however getting sufficient golden acorns requires you to discover the suburbs and resolve a sequence of environmental puzzles.
Monitoring your progress is made simpler by means of utilizing flagpoles at every location. These present what number of collectables there are and which you may have picked up. Alongside the golden acorns there are numerous costume items (a few of which have gameplay modifiers) and reload tokens that improve your passive reload talent. Gathering these isn’t needed to complete the sport however a lot of the enjoyment available comes from fixing the mini-puzzles that conceal them. These vary from rigorously making your method throughout a lounge submerged in lava to rapidly eliminating a set variety of enemies and the big variety does assist to take care of curiosity throughout the six to eight hours it’ll take to finish.
In fact, the principle draw of the sport’s title is the gun and there are a number of to unlock and select from as you make your method by means of to the top. You start with a easy pistol, however uzis, shotguns, grenade launchers and bazookas can be found afterward. Unlocking these requires you to take one from an enemy after which purchase them from set spots across the ranges. These are clearly vital to defend your self in opposition to the enemy brokers, however gunplay can be key to traversal as taking pictures your weapons while leaping provides you further distance or top. Balancing between the hovering functionality of an uzi and the additional top of a shotgun is vital in fixing lots of the environmental puzzles.
Whereas removed from being triple AAA and even remotely polished, Squirrel With A Gun is competent graphically. Glitches are current, however these are a key a part of the sport’s attraction. Enemies are largely an identical with only some totally different enemy agent varieties however the visible design of the varied areas is stable sufficient. Sound design is purposeful however the principle takeaway is the boss struggle music that goes tougher than it has any proper to, with a Babymetal meets early 2000s nu-metal vibe.
