Exit the Gungeon

Although it might have slipped under many gamers' radar, 2016's Enter the Gungeon was a frantically fun shooter that proved to be a hit with fans. Now that prospective "gungeoneers" have found their way in, Exit the Gungeon comes along to get them the heck out. The follow-up has changed up more than a few of the game mechanics this time around, most notably the shift from being a top-down dungeon crawler to being a sort of side-scrolling platform game, with players riding a series of fast-moving elevators and navigating through rooms in a mad dash to climb to the surface before the whole place collapses around them. Toss in the constant flow of enemies and gunfire, along with your own gun's new ability to almost randomly shift forms on the fly, and you've got all the elements for a truly chaotic experience.

Exit the Gungeon, with all its changes from the original game, feels less like a true sequel and more like a side game spin-off. That's not to say that there isn't a lot of fun to be had in jumping, dodging, and, of course, blasting through anything between you and the surface. But the game's difficulty curve starts off at a steep incline and just keeps going. While the ever changing form of the player's gun adds variety to the repetitive feel of the game, it's also jarring to go from one form to another. One minute you're aiming lasers with pinpoint precision, only to suddenly shift to lobbing grenade-like explosives and completing changing your strategy. Making matters worse, key mechanics, like the dodge roll move, feel almost ineffective in practice. Exit the Gungeon isn't bad by any means, especially taken as an arcade shooter. The game just lacks any real depth to keep players coming back for more.