Gunstoppable is blazing fast momentum-fueled roguelite shooter, one that fans of fast-paced action will no doubt absolutely love. Disclosure: a key was provided to GamingOnLinux.
Speed is the real name of the game here as you run, slide, jump, rail-grind, wall run and grapple your way around the colourful but slightly confusing maps. The idea is to smash through as many robots as you can to build up your weapons, their buffs and your character buffs to become a total unstoppable force.
It is completely silly, and does not take anything seriously at all - which works well enough. We have plenty of serious shooters with their gritty campaigns, sometimes you just want to load in and blow shit up - and this is exactly what Gunstoppable is good for.
The movement systems certainly get your blood pumping. Running and sliding across the floor while unleashing every bullet you have, then hopping onto a wall with your grappling hook to wall run along it will continually giving off a barrage of destruction on all the various enemy types - yep, that's the good stuff right there.
As for the actual combat, the gunplay feels pretty…basic, in the nicest possible way you can tell it's a low-budget indie game. The gunplay feels as basic as the likes of Doom and Quake. There's no real feedback on the weapons and their sound doesn't make them sound all that impressive either. Still, the various weapons and upgrades are fun to use with the dual-wielding system where you can fire both weapons together or individually and you get to continually modify them as you dash through it by picking up different mods so each run can feel quite different.
The point in Gunstoppable is to go through a series of small objectives each time until you hit a boss, then rip through the boss with everything you've earned during the run. The boss fights are comical too. The first one being a giant mechanical crab with a really bad accent. You'll die plenty, but thankfully there's a meta-upgrade system to keep boosting your character with some augments too so dying still serves a purpose other than to frustrate you a little.
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The thing that bugged me the most was the cringey dialogue, which you can almost entirely ignore just to focus on the explosive action during the missions. They highlight the fact that is has a "fully-voiced story campaign" but it's nothing notable really. As for the story, that's pretty basic too, it's all about the backlash against greedy billionaires as you take on the role of an elite soldier's revenge spree that's being livestreamed to millions.
While I didn't much like the dialogue, it at least has a real vibrant personality when you take all parts of it together.
Played entirely on my Fedora KDE 44 desktop with Proton 11. It had great performance and was very smooth, which is essential for this type of shooter. Oddly, no graphical options at all to change so it's a good thing it does perform well.
A few issues encountered that somewhat soured the experience. Firstly, the music would just randomly stop entirely, which made the game at times feel a bit empty. Not a huge loss, since the music is also not entirely great. It needed a better, longer, and heavier soundtrack to fit. Enemies could easily get stuck in the environment, making some just too easy and during some events where I faced off against enemy waves, it seemed like some enemies spawned outside the area and eventually just told me I had finished the wave. A bit too many rough edges like that.
The enemies tend to get in each-others way often too, blocking their own fire and melee attacks. At one point to test it, with multiple enemies all around me. I stood there with them all attacking for a good 5 minutes because most of their attacks didn't even land with me standing still. Even with melee enemies surrounding me, they were swinging and seemingly jumping over me missing. The AI is a bit naff overall.
You'll want a mouse and keyboard for this one. The speed just doesn't feel right with a controller at all. That said, it's playable with a controller, but one of those rare times I really will suggest you get that mouse ready.
With so many different types of builds to make, it can at times be good fun to blast through it and see what kind of weird and stupid combination of guns you can make. Gunstoppable is bright, loud, silly and explosive fun. Thanks to the roguelite structure of it - you can jump in again and again to try out something different. But the dialogue gets annoying repetitive.
Overall though, it was just a bit above an okay mark for me.
From the press release: "Gunstoppable wouldn’t be where it is today without the support of my community," said Salaar Kohari, co-founder of CAGE Studios. "Today’s launch is the culmination of years of development, showing Gunstoppable at events, and addressing feedback to create a momentum-based shooter that all FPS fans can get hooked on."
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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