EXIT THE GUNGEON SECRETS UPDATE
EXIT THE GUNGEON SECRETS SERIES

Its low retail cost helps sweeten the sell, and $10 does feel like the right price for what is, at the end of the day, just more Gungeon, but it’s impossible to imagine this game achieving the same distinguished standing as Enter The Gungeon, even after some expected updates and tweaks in the months to come.Two are being made available immediately: ' Exit the Gungeon,' a side-on sequel to frantic overhead shooter 'Enter the Gungeon,' and side-scrolling shoot'em up 'Sky Racket.' For long-time Gungeon fans, it would’ve been an insta-buy if it ended up a match-three puzzler or dating sim, though it’s hard not to feel shorted by the final result. Both the dodge roll and jump actions add i-frames to slide past bullets, so you’ll have to get used to hopping directly into danger, which is probably the game’s most interesting new mechanic.Įxit The Gungeon is a hard game to freely recommend.

EXIT THE GUNGEON SECRETS UPDATE

The brief locked-room portions in between elevator rides seem like a proof of concept for a true 2D platformer Gungeon game, and the 2.0 update adds interesting new layouts and enemies to these sections. If anything, it’s often genuinely interesting to experience the original game as a platformer. The fact that the Exit The Gungeon experience is so chaotically different will probably make most players hunger for a more static, non-Blessed mode, though that seems doubtful as a future update. When Ox and Cadence show up in the hub and begin selling additional weapons, the purchases seem sadly meaningless in practice who’s to know when a specific gun will pop up, and who really cares, since each of them will always be temporary? The whole game sometimes feels a little like The Binding of Isaac’s Greed Mode, a feature which emerged in a later update that scrunched the exploration of the game into more bite-sized, pick-up-and-play scenarios, otherwise keeping most of the basic systems intact. Randomization and luck-whether it’s NPCs appearing on a run or special items to find or purchase-are really the main attraction here, aside from the perspective shift. The newer bosses are interesting and would fit right into Enter but, all in all, these bullet sponges usually overstay their welcome.

EXIT THE GUNGEON SECRETS SERIES

For series fans, some bosses are mutated versions and combinations of the rogue’s gallery you love to hate, and they’re just reminiscent enough to be able to immediately predict a few bullet patterns, sight unseen. Each level features one of several different bosses, and most of them are considerably difficult with large HP pools. Hit the shop, rinse, repeat until you beat the Dragun, then try again with another character. The flow of game progression amounts to: see the elevator which will serve as the level, stay alive until you’re shuttled off to a small static room with some light platforming and gunplay, possibly run into an unlockable NPC, return to the elevator for another fight, then face the boss. Get in, get out, and don’t feel too bad that RNG failed you this time, since even the best weapon swaps are temporary. With Enter, this sensibility could turn a run into a drawn-out, tense affair, but Exit seems designed to just absorb you into an arcade-like escape attempt until you die or succeed.

Very little of that manifests here, with Exit the Gungeon’s constant weapon-switching chaos (interestingly, inspired by the unlockable Blessed mode found in the original) seemingly built to counter premeditation of any stripe.

Part of what makes Enter the Gungeon so special is it’s careful approach to combat, the myriad of synergies which exist between items and weapons, and the sense of player agency. It’s hard to call the latter a distinct improvement, though, and it can’t help but feel like an artificial pretense to boost the game’s perceived value, now that it’s on (scare-quotes) “proper” gaming platforms. The new version which shipped with the Nintendo Switch release is a little beefier, though, with the trumpeted 2.0 update adding some fixes, gameplay adjustments, and additional content, slightly extending the length of the experience.

Exit the gungeon secrets