Gunbrella - Review

It was about a year ago that I got to put time into Gunbrella, with it then showing up at PAX Australia and then earlier this year, where I got to put even more time into the game. Each time I put on my boots and picked up my gun, which was also a bullet proof umbrella, I found myself having a good time. The real question was, could the entire game keep me interested, or like a strong breeze to a cheap umbrella, would it turn my hopes inside out?

The basic story of Gunbrella is that you are hunting down the man who killed your wife and stole your baby, that is it. Murphy, the character you play as, doesn’t have much to say and would rather let the Gunbrella that he found do the talking, but between the two of them, the story does get expanded upon. As you venture through the world, you will begin to meet up with folks that have also been wronged by your target and those who live over in Avalon. The problem is that the story can go for a good chunk of time, without actually progressing, allowing you to just get from point a to b, before it pops its head up again. As you get close to your target, things take a turn and you will lose three years of your life to prison and then things get even crazier.

While Murphy is all about that revenge, the world around him is slowly falling apart, with resources being mined and taken for the use of those in Avalon. Much like the name in our world, Avalon in Gunbrella is considered to be a wonderful place, but many people will never get to visit it. One of the things you learn early on, at least in rumour form, is that Avalon is unable to produce its own children and there for kidnaps those form the rest of the world. With a lack of resources and missing kids, things seem quite bleak around Allendale and Orwell and they only get worse. While Avalon is a big threat, there is also Cult-45, a group of people that are taking people from their homes in order to summon god, or their god at least. All of this combines to create a world that feels oppressive and dystopian, but when you have a gun, there is enough bang to light things up.

The Gunbrella is more than just a means of shooting all who would get in your way, there is of course the gun part, but the umbrella part is something you will use more. When you open it up, if you are facing an enemy, it can act as a barrier, to protect you from damage, however if you open it up at the right time it can deflect most enemy attacks back at them. If you need to get down from on high, opening it up will let you float down safely, though I never found any fall damage, so it may not be useful all the time. The best use though is if you are in the air, when you open it up, you will be propelled forward and at a good pace as well. Once you get used to that, you will need to combine it with wall jumps, as you can only zip around once before you need to touch ground to reset it. Wall jumping, swinging hooks and the umbrella, all combined make for a tremendous movement system, but it never comes into effect in battles.

Most of the battles you encounter are against random enemies, some of them have guns, some flamethrowers and a few are animals with teeth. These are fairly easy to deal with, especially if you upgrade the gun, but beyond that are the boss fights. The first few take place against eldritch abominations that Cult-45 has summoned, but later on you will start facing off against the forces of Avalon. The reason why I had issues with the boss fights is that most of them are just shoot, dodge, reflect and repeat. There are sometimes when you are on platforms that move, but they just throw regular enemies at you, but all the boss fights take place in a singular location and that is it. Even the final fight takes place in a single space and while it was a challenge, given the design of the enemy, I would have loved to have seen it be more.

I mentioned before that you can upgrade your Gunbrella and to an extent its worth doing, at least once, the problem is that beyond the once, it becomes a real chore to continue to do it. The first upgrade for each aspect, damage and reload, costs 10 gears each and then 25 and then 50. The problem is those gears are rare to come by in the world and buying them from the merchant costs a lot of money. You can pick up animal parts from some critters you kill, or ammo from enemies and sell all of that, but sometimes that money won’t get you half way to the 25 gears, let alone 50. Plus those values are for each, if you want to upgrade both aspects equally, you need 170 gears for those levels. There is nothing stopping you from trying to farm all you can, but the world doesn’t respawn things once you kill them, so it’s a hard slog to do so. In the end, with the ammo types you can find or buy, upgrading the gun seems a bit pointless, which begs the question, why is it in there?

One of the games most interesting aspects is its visual design, its clearly retro inspired, but displays more detail than your average Super Nintendo title. The game doesn’t hold back on things either, there is a lot to enjoy there, with intricate foreground elements and backgrounds that seem to go on for ages. Murphy, Merle and the rest of the characters you meet, all look interesting as they have two looks. The first is the chibi-esq style that you see in the world, each of them are basic, but still present a nice clean design so you know who is who. The second look for them are in the portraits that appear when you start to talk to characters, these contain more detail and if there was a gallery of images in the game, these would hang in them. There are not a lot of locations in the game, with you revisiting the same few places over and over, but they do have two looks, due to your time away and seeing the differences in them is quite nice.

The games audio is a little harder to endorse, for one reason, the game has musical tracks that sound like they are playing slowly. The characters do speak, but they use the old school mumble speech, though at times it sounds far more like Simlish than just random noises. While it is fine, there are times when there is a lot of it happening at once, which can become annoying. The sound effects are good, the enemies – both those with bodies and those without, all sound great and spooky at times. The Gunbrella has enough punch in it that when you fire it, you will hear it and then it hits its target, sometimes there is a gross and yet satisfying impact noise. The weird comes in with the games soundtrack, which as I said sounds like some songs are playing slow. If you take a vinyl record designed for 78rpm and play it at the slower 45rpm, you can still hear the song, but it sounds off. That is what happens here and I know its done intentionally, but there were times when the game would lag in its performance, so slow music and that doesn’t combine for a great feeling.

Gunbrella was a blast to play, gun pun intended, the story is fairly basic and its ending may not sit with most players, but it feels right for the quest you undertake. Some interesting characters and unique bosses help break up the run and gun gameplay, but sometimes the lack of clear direction can be more of a hindrance than anything else. While it is a one and done experience, Gunbrella packs enough into its runtime that by the end, you will be happy to put the weapon down.

The Score

8.5

Review code provided by Devolver Digital

The Pros

+Combat feels fast and fluid and once you get used to moving around, becomes even better

+Some of the boss fights are gory and fun, with some unique designs…

The Cons

-…however each of them always take place within single rooms, which feels like a letdown

-There are some music tracks that have slowdown effects add, which don’t work out quite as well as they might have hoped