Gunstoppable Review - Speed Is the Only Currency That Matters

Gunstoppable is one of those games that crawls under your skin after just one encounter: the dynamics, the atmosphere, the raw feeling; everything is there and accounted for. However, at the very beginning, I was kind of cautious because roguelikes are not among the most loveable genres in gaming for me, to put it mildly. I love shooters, though, and I thought love and hatred could make some balance here, and as a final verdict, I must say they did, and luckily, in the favour of shooters.

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Roguelite shooter kind of worked for me, even though I don't like roguelites.

Story

The premise of Gunstoppable is quite simple yet highly effective. You play as Fenix, a gladiator-turned-killing machine built by an evil CEO, who decides to face his creators head-on in a killing spree, destroying everyone and everything responsible for the misery in his life. As he cuts through the blood and bones of his enemies in his bloody crusade, the entire thing is filmed and shared on the internet because, why not? Why not execute good-ol' revenge and become famous in the process?

The story isn't the deepest one you'll encounter in such games, but it'll hold the water for sure. The political intrigue is always something that can spice up a blunt story, and when you add a whole revenge thing in the formula, you'll get something that will occupy your attention for the rest of the game, or at least something that will help you live through the repetition of a roguelite loop.

One more thing about the story that caught me by surprise, to be honest, is its interpretation, or the developers' decision to give it a full voice-over treatment. The main character's voice talent, along with several others, did an extraordinary job here, which made the entire story way more serious and noteworthy. Also, the use of trash talk and internet-modern slang gives the story a modern touch. Again, I won't be saying that the story of Gunstoppable is something highly sophisticated, but it is far from blunt and uninteresting either.

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The story in Gunstoppable won't be a decisive element, but it will hold your attention, nonetheless.

Gameplay

When you start playing Gunstoppable, you can immediately see the resemblance to some games, like Doom, for example, where fast shooting and moving mean the difference between life and death; however, Gunstoppable has the ace up its sleeve here. Fast movements are translated into a mechanic here: the faster and smoother your movement is, the more damage you deal to your enemies, so if you want to become as effective in combat, move and stop for nothing. Standing still and cowarding behind cover will get you nowhere, so you're expected to be grappling, sliding, wall-running and rail-grinding constantly.

Gunstoppable really rewards speed and movement because it won't just feel smooth and seamless, but it will also keep your adrenaline rush through the roof all the time, while your fingers start hurting from wildly pressing the buttons on your controller or on your keyboard.

Regarding combat, it is built around a dual-wielding system, where you use two weapons while playing, and both weapons can be shot separately or at the same time. If you want to play smart, you can always use one weapon while another is reloading to keep the momentum alive all the time. All the weapons can be modified 'on the fly' by picking up different modifications in a true roguelike style, so you can, for example, turn your shotgun into a flamethrower, or your grenade launcher into a banana launcher, although bananas are not bananas per se, but rather small tactical nukes; yes, you read it right. Gunstoppable doesn't shy from absurdity in its gameplay, and this is something that gives this game its distinct flavour.

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Every now and then, the game will throw some buffs your way, the real roguelite-style gameplay.

Fast movements and precise shooting will reward you with kill chains, which activate 'Reaper Mode' as a result. In this mode, time is slowed, and you become an even stronger killing machine, cutting through the enemies like a hot knife slicing through butter. The reaper mode is something really beautiful, and every time it was triggered, I felt like Arnold Schwarzenegger in Commando – kill count, unlimited.

In Gunstoppable, you'll go through the level until you either kill the boss and everything that level has in store for you, or until you die and the process resets. Such is the nature of roguelites. However, dying doesn't mean the loss of everything in Gunstoppable. After each attempt, the game will give you the option to do permanent upgrades with the resources you gather, and those upgrades stay with you; temporary buffs you come across in the runs are lost every time you die.

I also noticed that Gunstoppable isn't as punishing as some other roguelites and roguelikes I used to play. You will die, that's for sure, and sometimes those deaths will totally be avoidable, but the game is fair, and the difficulty and the challenge are quite well-balanced here. Also, the game isn't based on luck alone- which weapons you get, which buffs you run into, or anything similar. Every upgrade, from weapon buffs to some general improvements, is usually very useful and changes how your runs look, but at the end of the day, your skill is the main decisive element in each run.

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The bosses might be the worst disappointment of Gunstoppable.

I mentioned bosses earlier, and I must say that they were the biggest disappointment for me in the entire game. I beat each boss on the first try and died from regular enemies countless times, and that could be everything you need to know about bosses in Gunstoppable. For example, the first boss the game introduces is a huge crab-looking robot, which looks quite intimidating but can easily be killed if you take the higher ground and nullify the effect of his missile (they cannot hit you becouse they hit the cieling instead), and this is just one of many design flaws in Gunstoppable, and all those flaws seem to be tied directly to boss fights, which is quite the disappointment.

Visuals and Sounds

Gunstoppable is a flashy, colourful, and beautiful game, and that might be the best visual explanation of it. The game visuals heavily lean into slightly cel-shaded, hand-drawn aesthetics with a cyberpunk theme screaming all over. Gunstoppable definitely doesn't chase photorealism in its visual presentation, but rather the looks that are more reminiscent of a comic book and not some seriously looking shooter like Call of Duty, Battlefield and the like, and this choice perfectly suits the game.

The developers really knew what they were doing when designing Gunstoppable, and the first couple of levels are real proof of this. You will be amazed by the game's colours and the lights of a cyberpunk city, but as you keep playing, you'll notice some things seem quite out of place for this design choice, or at least they seemed to me; perhaps you won't find them problematic.

The weapon designs, for instance, look like they belong in a more realistic game with more grounded design and not in a game that looks more like it jumped straight out of a comic book, but that might be just my personal sentiment. The developers tried to break this seriousness with different unrealistic weapon modifications, but that is exactly what made them look out of place.

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Gunstoppable in its all-colourful glory. The game looks just beautiful.

I played Gunstoppable on my PC (RTX 3080 Ti, Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB RAM), and performance wasn't a concern at any point. The game doesn't even offer graphics options to tweak, which is a little odd, but it seems it didn't need to. Everything ran perfectly, without a single hitch, and the fans on my PC staying quiet the whole time tells me Gunstoppable simply isn't a demanding game to run, at least not on hardware like mine.

Sound-wise, I expected much more from Gunstoppable, because this is a kind of game in which a good soundtrack can do wonders and elevate the experience through the roof, but sadly, the music that plays while you're running around like your life depends on it (it actually does), is kind of weak and dull. If it was up to me, I'd put some badass metal soundtrack to boil my blood, but instead, you get some sort of electronic music with a small impact.

The weapon sounds don't do justice to the atmosphere as well, and while shooting, you'll feel like you're shooting water guns instead of a real deal. The sounds are weak, blunt, and totally unimpactful, and they might be the weakest link in the entire chain called Gunstoppable. 

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Apart from boss battles, sound design is perhaps the biggest letdown of Gunstoppable.

Conclusion

I had every possible reason to hate Gunstoppable from the starting moment because roguelites and I don't usually see eye to eye, but I stayed for its 'shooter' part, and I'm very glad I did. Moving fast and hitting hard isn't just something that sells the game here; it's the entire philosophy, and surprisingly, it works.

Where the game starts showing its cracks is sadly its core loop. Bosses are there, yes, but they are more obstacles in the way and not a real, genuine challenge. The sound design never quite catches up to the visuals either, and for a game built entirely around speed and adrenaline, weak weapon sounds and a forgettable soundtrack are a real missed opportunity.

Still, if you're willing to overlook those apparent issues, you'll get a shooter with a true identity: dual-wielding chaos, absurd weapon combos, and a Reaper Mode that makes you feel unstoppable, pun intended. Gunstoppable isn't a perfect game, but it's a confident one, and confidence goes a long way in a genre this crowded.