"Rolling Gunner" Review

Player(s): 1
Platform(s): Nintendo Switch

Rolling Gunner is a game that takes the basics of the bullet hell genre and adds a little bit of spice to try and stand on its own.

One of the few pretty parts of the game.

Bullet hell games are side-scrolling shooters where you control a character or vehicle freely while shooting enemies and trying to stay alive, usually culminating in a boss before advancing the stage. At its core, Rolling Gunner is exactly this, to the letter.

The game begins with a long-winded intro that tries to get you invested in a story that is essentially meaningless. The most successful games of this genre I’ve played are the ones that either embrace their narrative or avoid it entirely. This game spends too much time throwing random jargon at the player in a very dull intro that does nothing for the game. Ultimately, this is skippable, but it feels like a complete waste of resources and time that could have just been spent on the game itself, since it adds absolutely nothing to the game. Once you get beyond that though, you are presented with a clean menu and an easy way to jump into the game.

Your satellite can shoot in any direction.

There are a total of 4 difficulty levels to choose from. They are appropriately paced, in a way that you can start where you’re comfortable, master that difficulty and then advance to the next difficulty with just enough challenge to feel fresh again, but without feeling unfair. This isn’t something that games like this are known for doing, so this is a very welcome balance. Three different ships are given as options. They look the same, except for a color variation, which is honestly extremely lazy. You’ll find this to be a running theme throughout the game. The difference between the ships is their movement speed and shooting patterns. It’s subtle but helps to cater to different playstyles. This is something I really liked, especially since there is no real reward for playing as any particular ship. This means that you can choose what caters to your needs and use it to enjoy the various difficulties without feeling pressured to play a way you don’ want to.

You always know when the boss is incoming.

Once you dive into your first stage, you’ll notice some relatively generic but still well-designed enemies. The most important thing in a game that revolves around the enemies is having each enemy type be distinctive, which is true here. The issue you’ll notice right off the bat is that the overall fidelity and quality of the assets is quite low. The game was clearly designed with portable mode in mind, where everything looks fine. When in docked mode, things are clearly lower resolution, imperfections are easy to spot, and everything just seems off. It’s not terrible, but I feel like they could have spent a little more time scaling the resolution of the assets to convert when docked. This odd level of aesthetic imbalance transfers to the music and sound design as well. The sound effects all feel impactful and nice, but the music feels extremely generic, like something that could have been pulled from a stock music site. Laziness, again. Still, it’s all passable, and honestly, I ended up spending a good amount of my time muting the game anyway due to playing in public places.

The controls are salvageable, but the lack of analog sensitivity means that sometimes, when you need to be able to move precisely in order to dodge a single bullet, that you can’t. There’s only one speed you can move at. I imagine this was done so that the D-Pad and analog stick both provide the same experience. In a game like this where precise movement is at the core of the game, this is extremely detrimental to the experience. You can still manage, and I progressed through the game, but there are times I died when I knew I would have been fine had my ship not jumped further than I needed it to due to the lack of precise movement. On the bright side, the hit box for your ship is relatively small, somewhat making up for this lack of precision. The hit box is smaller than the ship, so once you get used to it you don’t even worry about visually what is hitting your ship, but only what is going to hit the center of your ship.

The bosses come in various shapes and sizes.

The name sake comes from the way you control the satellite canon near your ship. Your ship always shoots forward, but the satellite also shoots, and is controlled based on how your ship is moving. Essentially, it ‘rolls’ around your ship as you move. It takes some getting used to but is easy to adapt to and is a fun concept. You can hold down a button to lock it in place as well, to maximize damage towards one location while being able to move around. It adds a nice dynamic that isn’t entirely unique, but controls in a unique enough way that it feels fresh.

Your score resets when a continue is used.

As you’re playing you will notice a lot going on on-screen. This is to be expected with a shooter, but unfortunately the game slows down quite a bit. There are constant frame drops which can get very frustrating and disrupt the flow. I learned how to use that to my advantage during more difficult sections of the game, but ultimately this shouldn’t happen. I noticed this happened more often in docked mode, so if you’re looking for the absolute best experience, make sure you are playing in portable mode.

Victory!

Thankfully, the bosses, which are where the biggest thrills happen in bullet hell games, are fun. They provide different patterns and strategies and despite them being challenging, I always looked forward to facing them. To top it off, if you beat the game without using continues, you will unlock a special final boss. I only managed to get to this point on the two lowest difficulties, but it certainly incentivizes getting better. Not using continues means you are maximizing your score, since your score resets every time you use a continue. Getting an extra encounter as a reward for doing so means even more opportunity for high scores. See, high scores are all this game has going for it. There are no unlockables, and beyond the ‘secret’ boss, there is no reward for doing anything in this game. It’s extremely barebones. The only thing to shoot for is higher and higher scores, which caters to nobody but the absolute hardcore. This is an absolute pity because from a gameplay standpoint, the game is reasonably causal friendly. Once you finish the game in about an hour though, you have no reason to come back beyond maximizing scores. It’s a shame that they couldn’t have found a way to offer replayability outside of the difficulty. Don’t get me wrong, bullet hell games lend themselves to replayability by being short challenging and fulfilling, but they could have tried to do something to appeal to more players, considering they did so in the way the difficulty was designed. I almost feel like they thought up a bunch of cool ideas, but never tried to figure out what their ultimate goal was, making the game feel a bit incomplete and inconsistent.

Seems overwhelming, but is reasonable to navigate.

When it boils down to it, Rolling Gunner has a lot of potential, but ends up being generic in more ways than just its name, that ultimately bring down what should be a fantastic experience. The biggest sore spots are the rather inconsistent framerates and the lack of precision movement. Fixing these two things alone would add a ton of value to this game, but it’s unlikely we’ll see these fixed. If you’re looking for a fulfilling, creative and well-made shooter than you may be better off buying the cheaper Ikaruga on Switch. Still, if you are craving a game like this, and want something new you may not have played, it may just satisfy you. Realistically though, you’re better off looking elsewhere.

- Teepu

For More Information on "Rolling Gunner":
​https://www.nintendo.com/games/detail/rolling-gunner-switch/

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Graphics: C
Sound: C
Gameplay: C
Value: D+

OVERALL: C-

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Disclaimer: This game was provided to us from the publisher for the purpose of this review.

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