GUN JAM PC Review

Jaw Drop Games, a UK Based game development studio, very literally dove head first into the game development pool. Though, as their name implies, their work is pretty jaw-dropping going straight for big releases from the start. Their first release being GUN JAM, a first-person shooter rhythm game.

 

GUN JAM has released on 19 April 2023, but in all honestly, maybe a little extra time for storyboarding or further character development would have helped this fast-paced shooter. However, Jaw Drop Games already has another game in the pipeline called Deathground, a dinosaur horror survival game that looks amazing. From the looks of it, it’s going to be another massive release as well, but only time will tell if it can redeem Jaw Drop Games.

Normally what you’d expect when starting a new game is possibly an opening cinematic or, at the very least, some information to introduce you to the game. Sadly, GUN JAM doesn’t give you this small mercy and instead, you just jump straight into the chaos. At least the menu music is pretty good though, now if only it could play a different song on each launch or maybe have some other creative flair to keep it interesting.

So, before you can start shooting to the beat, you’ll get to choose a song and stage. The OST might be limited but it is an OST after all, so it makes sense that there won’t be a mountain of songs, but for a game with such heavy hardware requirements, you’d think there would be a bit more than just 4 stages to pick from. Yes, only 4. On the plus side, there are 3 different characters with their own respective health pools, speeds, and Overdrive Abilities. Unfortunately, you can’t mix and match since characters are tied to the stages. So, if you want to play the Noise Maze, you’ll have to play Tap.

 

GUN JAM has 4 stages that look similar in theme, but what sets them apart is the stage type. Two stages are Checkpoint Stages, and the other two are Arena Stages, each having its own difficulty as well. Arena stages are a bit smaller but also tend to have an endless enemy spawn rate, the objective is mostly aimed at hitting a high score. Checkpoint Stages are a lot more interesting and bigger in size. What sets Checkpoint Stages apart from the Arenas is that you’ll have to travel from area to area and take down bosses and lesser enemies. However, Checkpoint Stages are also time limited, taking down enemies and bosses or moving to the next area increases your remaining time.

As mentioned, the characters are unique in their own way with health, speed, and Overdrive Abilities. While you can’t hear them since they’re not voiced, you can see that each one has a different hand gesture when continuously dashing. Health and Speed are self-explanatory, since GUN JAM is a first-person shooter. However, the Overdrive Abilities are what set them apart, even if only slightly. If you’re on the stage where you play as Ballard, you’ll have a medium health pool, and the same goes for speed, but his Overdrive Ability is called Berserk. This allows you to do high damage melee attacks to enemies who are in range.

Aero has Bullet Time, which slows down enemy projectiles and movement for a short time, and Tap has Quad Damage (This one explains itself). While the Overdrive Abilities are really fun to use, they’ll need to be charged by taking down enemies or collecting orbs that drop from the enemies you take down. Though to get more orbs to drop for a quick charge, you’ll need to raise your multiplier as you fire away. This is done by keeping to the beat of the song.

 

Once you get into the killing mode, you’ll get to see what makes GUN JAM unique as a rhythm game. The beat you’ll have to follow isn’t exactly just a beat, it’s a mix of full beats, half beats, and quarter beats. This unique mechanic makes the gameplay a bit more interesting because each beat type also has a weapon tied to it. Luckily, you don’t have to manually switch weapons for the beat types, but you’ll need to keep an eye out on the upcoming beats as the weapons will automatically switch for each beat. You’ll have to keep on your toes to deal maximum damage and raise your multiplier even higher.

The weapons in question are the Double Barrel Shotgun for full beats, the Railgun for half beats, the Plasma Rifle for quarter beats, and the Rocket Launcher for beat emphasis. Each weapon having its own unique firing type and damage, this does put an interesting spin on a shooter that keeps the gameplay interesting. While you can fire off beat as well, it is recommended to stay on the beat instead for maximum damage and multiplier rate.

Aside from weapons, you’ll also have a dash ability that’s tied to the beat. It’s best used for dodging the bullet hell you might get caught in, but holding down the dash is great for getting around the stage in a hurry when there’s a good string of beats coming up. You’ll have to use this along with the jump pads to get around and dodge incoming projectiles or get to the health refills scattered around the stage.

 

When you’re out running and gunning to the beat, you’ll encounter different types of enemies or drones on the ground and in the air, along with the occasional dog-like beast. Alongside these, you’ll get a boss now and then. Though, to do any damage to the boss, you’ll need to take down every other enemy first. From there, the boss’ health bar lights up, and you can rain unholy hell down on it. Sadly, there is a severe lack of variety with normal enemies.

The biggest saving grace of GUN JAM is that you can add in your own songs, and from there, it’ll generate a beat map so you can fight to the beat of your favorite music. However, the beat map might need some more work as it’s not entirely accurate. Even with the lack of accuracy on beat mapping, being able to play your own music does refresh the experience in GUN JAM a bit and having a song with a high Beat Per Minute rate could make for some serious chaos.

GUN JAM features a really heavily detailed visual side, given that the game is relatively hardware intensive, there is a definite attention to detail. Enemies and bosses are quite well created and the projectiles fired at you aren’t overbearing at all, this is a key point in a bullet hell scenario because the main point is to be able to dodge. But if there are a lot of glow effects or bloom, everything can start blending together, making it much more difficult to see what’s coming at you.

 

This is a game that needs the advisory saying “Headphones Recommended”, though most rhythms have it because you’re playing to the music. The OST that comes with the game has a few good/fitting songs, the rest don’t really work too well with the type of game that GUN JAM is. However, it does seem like the smaller details, like projectile sounds or gun sounds were nicely polished. It just sounds like the OST was rushed and intentionally dragged out to unnecessarily lengthen the songs.

Unfortunately, GUN JAM had so much potential to be great, but it’s just missing so much extra detail. The game is interesting and a joy to play at first but it loses that luster very quickly once you realize there isn’t much else to the game. With the lack of enemy variety, character background, or more stages to explore and destroy enemies in, GUN JAM needs a lot more work that we might see in the future. It’s a great game for players who want to chase scores and casually compare scores with friends, but it might not go further than that unless more content is added later on.

Jay Claassen
Editor, NoobFeed