Few premises are extra instantly interesting than Squirrel with a Gun’s. A sandbox recreation the place you management a gun-toting rodent and wreak havoc on the native inhabitants? Sure, please! And that premise definitely delivers to some extent, with fairly a couple of laugh-out-loud humorous moments proper out the gate and quite a lot of enjoyment to be discovered in the goofy journey’s opening hours. However this wacky Sciuridae simulator isn’t sitting on a stockpile of comedic acorns, as a substitute stuffing its cheeks with foolish gags all in one go, earlier than discovering its shops empty because the winter season quick approaches. Compounding that short-lived mirth are pretty severe efficiency points, together with common crashes that made me repeat lengthy stretches, which actually took the wind out of my furry wings. Squirrel with a Gun nonetheless affords a pair hours of amusing sandbox goofiness, and I eagerly await a extra fleshed out sequel in the identical vein as Goat Simulator 3, however this primary shot misses the goal as soon as the joke has run its course.
Like Untitled Goose Sport and Octodad: Dadliest Catch earlier than it, Squirrel with a Gun is a zany sandbox recreation the place you play a troublemaking animal who turns into an actual downside for the people round them. After acquiring a pistol from a careless authorities spook, you’re let unfastened on a suburban neighborhood to rob folks at gunpoint, wantonly destroy private property, and train your Second Modification proper to blast fools in the face just like the bloodthirsty little varmint you’re. It’s a very good time! However that dopey bit is strictly as shallow because it sounds, and although it solely took me 4 hours to roll credit, it took even much less time for the laughs to peter out.
Combating as a squirrel packing warmth proves fairly hole. You’ll use pistols, rifles, and even grenade launchers to ship Agent Smith-looking sons of a gun to their doom – and so they principally stand round and allow you to achieve this whereas placing up little or no resistance. They’re the one enemies to be discovered right here, and so they all go down in a few pictures. One spotlight is once you stun enemies and are then in a position to kill them off with a particular ending transfer, like peppering an enemy with lead from an uzi or swatting their greedy arms away when you carry out gunjitsu like a furry John Wick. Sadly, there’s solely certainly one of these animations for every weapon, so like quite a lot of issues in this journey, the novelty runs out pretty shortly. There isn’t a lot to fight past these fundamentals, and every weapon seems like simply one other indistinctive piece in the arsenal in a matter of seconds.
There are two boss fights to shake issues up, nevertheless, the place you tackle large army automobiles, like a tank. These encounters are fast sequences the place you shoot at glowing spots and whittle down a well being bar, which doesn’t present a lot of a problem, however they’re not less than a pleasant change of tempo and have a couple of gags that made me smile. If extra stuff like this made it into the story, it may need gone a protracted approach to prolong my enjoyment, however like every little thing else in this temporary journey, these antics are fleeting.
The puzzle-platforming, then again, is rather more satisfying. Firing your weapons as a method of double-jumping or in any other case propelling your self into the air to beat platforming challenges is way extra attention-grabbing than any of the fight in Squirrel with a Gun. The submachine gun is an effective way to maintain your self airborne for prolonged durations of time whereas crossing gaps, however nothing beats the rocket launcher in phrases of pure peak – it sends you crusing into the air to land (principally) safely on faraway platforms. Not one of the platforming is especially tough, however making your fluffy avatar sail from place to put doesn’t get previous almost as shortly as the remainder of the gameplay.
Sadly, Squirrel with a Gun’s good instances are liable to interruption by technical points that proved fairly problematic, even throughout its temporary runtime. I discovered myself watching a frozen display screen extra than 5 instances in as many hours, dropping a very good chunk of progress in the method, and was pressured to repeat whole sections. By the top, I acquired into the fear-driven behavior of speeding over to the static save factors that may be discovered in every space – and a very good factor too, as a result of crashes appeared to occur extra ceaselessly in the again half of the journey. And that’s not the one problem I bumped into, both: One cutscene triggered and forgot so as to add the squirrel the place he’s alleged to go, which broke every little thing and compelled me to reset, and there have been a number of instances the place my tiny buddy handed via geometry when shifting at excessive speeds and despatched me tumbling to the bottom, which pressured me to repeat sure platforming sections. Fortunately, Squirrel with a Gun already embraces a sure sort of chaotic vitality, so the occasional goofy glitch isn’t the top of the world. Nevertheless it did make a few of the in any other case entertaining sections lose a few of their luster as soon as I needed to replay them a 3rd time in the wake of a crash.