First Impressions: Gunfire Reborn
I was going to talk about Outriders this week since it came out and was in Game Pass. But since the server issues have been giving me a bunch of troubles with staying connected (apparently I’m not alone in this), we’re going back to Roguelike-Ville with Gunfire Reborn. I know I keep making detours here, but it’s my most consistent genre to talk about when it comes to really interesting and weird shit. This game is weird in the best way.
Gunfire Reborn is a roguelike first-person shooter RPG in Early Access by Hong Kong-based developer Duyoi Interactive Entertainment. In it, you traverse various locales, shooting anything that gets in your way whilst acquiring the sweetest of stuff in the process and upgrading your skill trees in between runs. If any of this sounds familiar, then congratulations, you’ve played a Roguelike from the last decade. But the way this game sets itself apart from the pack is through the playable characters and how they interact with the play space.
There are four in the current early access build of the game, but I’ve only played as the first one available because they space those characters out. The cat boy (not even sure what his name is), has a ball lightning attack that can stun an enemy and a corrosive grenade that leaves a pool of acid at the point of detonation. These are some neat ways of dealing with enemies and I’m super excited to get to the other characters, such as the Hawk Man Martial Artist, The Lightning Gunslinger Tiger, and above all else the dog man who can dual wield because he’s a dog man and I want to play as him.
These are all well and good, but this wouldn’t mean much if the loot and weapons weren’t worth using. Thankfully they are in Gunfire Reborn. You start each run with a revolver with 9 shots and infinite ammo reserves, good for a workhorse weapon, and proceed to make your way through the five biomes of increasingly difficult combat encounters topped off with a boss fight. The simple structure, level design, and placement of enemies all make for some decent deathmatch combat; with enemies ranging from standard spear users and gunners to more out-there stuff like Shield wielding heavies, higher tier crossbowmen, and giant beetles that serve as a charger archetype. The biggest challenge is from the boss fights, which can take your entire health bar in a few hits if you aren’t careful. I should know, I’m speaking from experience, these dudes hurt.
What makes this all manageable is the number of guns there are in this game and how you get them. As of the time of writing, the game is still in early access, so the weapon types range from the mundane (Pistols, SMGs, Shotguns), the more specialized (Sniper Rifles, Crossbows, Energy weapons), to the absolutely buckwild like a Lightning Cannon, a Minigun, and a fucking black hole gun. You can only carry two guns at a time along with your magnum, but these alongside your special abilities and an innate dash ability are more than enough to handle whatever this game throws your way. These can be unlocked by completing specific challenges in a way that’s reminiscent of how you unlock weapons In Dead Cells’s arsenal and when I can compare something favorably to Dead Cells, you know it’s doing something right in my book.
Gunfire Reborn, despite being in Early Access, has me interested in what this game can do next. It’s a fun way to kill an afternoon or evening, even with friends. Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: this game has an online co-op mode. So you can do all of the above with at least one other person. But as I was saying: even though it’s still in development, Gunfire Reborn is a ton of fun. If you want a good shooter or roguelike to check out, this is one I can recommend.
