Was Wildcat Gun Machine Worth It?

There’s a dungeon full of fleshy monstrosities. Take your pick of fancy guns and put them out of their disgusting misery. Was Wildcat Gun Machine worth it?

Full disclosure: We received a review code for the Nintendo Switch version of this game. Rest assured that this will not affect the quality or candor of our review.

Background

This is a twin stick shooter that drops you right into the action: no story, no fanfare, not even a tutorial. Get in and start shooting. This title is entirely gameplay-driven, so if you prefer a more story-driven affair then you’ll be disappointed. I’m not even sure that the protagonist has a name.

What does Wildcat Gun Machine do well?

The music is a dark synth that is initially very hype, but it overstays its welcome. You’ll notice the same loops becoming very prevalent.

The aesthetic of this game is very much “Newgrounds meets Heavy Metal 2000”. I grew up playing games like Alien Hominid and Castle Crashers, so I appreciate the visual styling. Surprisingly, it’s only rated E10+ on the eShop, which is pretty remarkable considering the explicit nature of some of the enemies.

What could Wildcat Gun Machine do better?

Gunplay

This game features “the Borderlands problem”, which is when many of the weapons tend to be “different” rather than “better”. You quite literally live or die based on your DPS, so novelty weapons are never a serious option.

Regardless of which guns you choose, combat eventually boils down to shooting enemies from offscreen. This even applies to bosses. It’s not particularly rewarding to slowly whittle away at foes you can’t see, but it’s your best bet for avoiding unnecessary damage.

Room Pacing

Each room has a varied amount of enemies. Sometimes, these rooms take forever to clear. There are rooms where wave after wave will spawn with no indication of how many enemies are left.

You’ll also find yourself looking for that last enemy that you missed, because the minimap is also disabled during combat. Hilariously, you can beat bosses faster than certain rooms.

Resources

In practice, you’ll be running out of ammo (and shields) every other room, which forces you to backtrack.

Respawn Ridiculousness

Choosing to restart at a checkpoint vs respawning at your corpse means that all the rooms will be repopulated. You aren’t incentivized to grind, so there’s no reason to ever choose this option unless you enjoy losing progress. The game does not tell you this.

So, respawning at your corpse is the only real option, but instead of getting right back into the action, you spawn outside the room you were in. You won’t spawn with any shields, and you’ll have the same amount of ammo for your secondary gun as when you died.

This means that your options are to tackle that room again with less resources, or to return to the checkpoint to reload and re-shield. What’s the point of extra lives that don’t let you immediately pick up where you left off? You might as well have a checkpoint outside every room to save me from constantly backtracking.

This is even more annoying when you’re stuck right outside a boss arena. There aren’t any shield pickups, so that means that you’re facing a boss with less health than normal. On top of that, the titular Gun Machine doesn’t recharge in certain fights. Your only choice is to throw yourself endlessly at the boss until you win.

Upgrades

The upgrades are priced so that extra lives are the earliest and cheapest upgrades, and death is clearly intended to be part of the gameplay loop. However, the death/respawn mechanic isn’t so much an extra chance to finish the fight as much as it is a way to keep from losing currency on death. This essentially means additional lives is useless. You also don’t respawn when you’re fighting a boss, so what was the point of these extra lives again?

Your small selection of abilities includes a dash and a grenade. Unfortunately, the cooldowns on these abilities are long enough to where you won’t use them as often as you’d like. The small environments punish you for imprecise movement, and the grenades take so long to recharge early on that you’ll be in the next hallway before it’s ready to go again.

Combat Cues

You will find yourself accidentally standing on top of spawning enemies, or projectile hitboxes won’t appear visually consistent.

Was Wildcat Gun Machine fun?

Currently, the lack of meaningful progression and surface-level combat doesn’t feel rewarding. There are a lack of anti-frustration features to keep players entertained. Don’t come into this expecting something similar to Hades or Enter the Gungeon, you’ll be greatly disappointed.

Is Wildcat Gun Machine good value?

This is another relatively short game at the 14.99 price point. Depending on how hard you hit the wall against some of the bosses, you might get a decent amount of playtime out of it.

Was Wildcat Gun Machine worth it?

Wildcat Gun Machine is a title that has potential, but doesn’t capitalize on it.

If your game is eschewing narrative because it is just so brutal and visceral then you need to be 100% certain that the gameplay loop holds up to scrutiny.

Realistically, this game could have actually benefited from at least a minimum amount of story and characterization, because without it there is no compelling reason to continue playing a game that isn’t actually fun. Wildcat Gun Machine is not worth it.

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