Gun Jam Review – Need a bit more Gun in this Jam

I can honestly say that in a sea of games that try to stand out from each other, I’ve yet to see something as wholly unique as Gun Jam. Though I’m pretty unfamiliar with the rhythm game genre, I can tell that Gun Jam appears to be stepping out of the norm and trying something different. The only question is, how well do they pull it off?

Gun Jam is a combination rhythm game and first-person shooter. Created by Jaw Drop Games and Raw Fury, Gun Jam is a love letter to both the Rhythm game genre and retro FPS shooters, combining aspects from both to create their unique title.

You can feel the retro inspiration in Gun Jam’s visuals, which closely emulate the old Wolfenstein-Doom shooter aesthetic while still maintaining a unique vibe. The game looks fantastic, but you won’t get a lot of time to appreciate it as you’ll mostly be looking at upcoming notes — At least, that was my experience.

The main gameplay mechanic that firmly slots Gun Jam into the rhythm game category is the fact that all of your shots have to be on beat. Not “Should be on the beat,” you’re not punished for missing the rhythm with your shots, they have to be on beat. A string of notes will ascend from the bottom side of the screen, and you must click when they’re on your crosshairs to shoot. If you miss your chance, you have to wait for the next note.

This mechanic is also tied to melee attacks and dodging, giving the game a unique sense of action economy where you need to decide exactly what you want to do on the fly as your notes come up. The game even suggests that you dodge when out of combat to stay on beat.

The best option isn’t always to just shoot, and even if you are choosing to pull the trigger you need to consider what gun you’re going to be doing it with as well.

There are four gun types in Gun Jam, each one tied to the type of note coming up on the screen. Choosing which action to use on each given note is a decision of what gun you’ve got in hand, how far you are from the enemy and how many shots are heading your way, a calculation that can feel a little overwhelming at times.

The Shotgun is a close-range weapon that appears mostly on full beats. As you can probably guess, it’s always used best when you’re right up in the enemy’s face. I tended to use my dash or melee more often than not on Shotgun notes, and I think that’s kind of the idea the game wants to you to have as they are the notes you will see the most.

The Railgun appears on half-beats and I feel is your best bet when it comes to actually dishing out damage. It does good damage both at short and long ranges and fires in a super straight line, and usually alternates between notes with the shotgun, giving you a chance to get a few shots on an enemy and then dash to avoid projectiles.

I forgot to mention, but yes, the enemies are shooting back at you the entire time, and you have a very limited amount of health. Your health pool goes from 5 hearts to 4, to as low as 3 depending on which map you play, and taking a projectile will knock a full heart off your bar. This is why dodging is such an important part of the action economy and why I almost exclusively used the shotgun for it.

The Plasma Rifle appears on multiple consecutive beats and does good damage at any range, much like the railgun. Because it appears on consecutive beats, the Plasma Rifle is always a big multi-hit spam option that you should use to focus fire bosses.

Finally, the Rocket Launcher appears on full or irregular beats and does big explosive splash damage, making it ideal for clearing out clusters of smaller enemies. You can also shoot it at your feet to TF2-style rocket jump into the air to gain a little distance from your foes.

Your weapon will cycle through before the next beat comes up, so you have a chance to plan for a moment before you need to get back on the beat. You don’t necessarily have to do an action on each beat either, but staying on the beat is important for building up Overdrive.

I felt the constant weapon swapping was really confusing at first, but I eventually started to get the hang of it. At worst, it felt like an inconvenience and definitely wasn’t my favorite part of the game’s mechanics. I think this was partial because the guns didn’t feel too distinct from each. The sounds of each gun were drowned out by the music and they didn’t really feel like they operated differently from each other.

This led to me at times sort of just click firing through everything without even really realizing what I was shooting, just kinda noticing that enemies were dying.

More visual effects, recoil, or louder sounds might go a long way to making the guns feel better. I’m no game designer, but I can tell you that gun feel is important in any fps. In Gun Jam, unfortunately, the guns didn’t feel they really did anything when I pulled the trigger. While enemies certainly died when I pulled the trigger, a lack of flair made it hard to feel like I was really responsible.

Overdrive is your reward for playing the rhythm game as a rhythm game. Staying on beat builds up a progress bar, which you can see on your HUD, which when full allows you to enter Overdrive. Overdrive gives you a special buff for a certain amount of time depending on which character you’re playing.

Tap’s overdrive multiples all damage they deal by 4. Aero gets some Matrix-style bullet time. Ballard gets to insta-kill with melee attacks. All three of these characters are tied to different maps and have different health and speed stats.

The characters feel different enough from each other thanks to their abilities, but I’m not really sure why each one has an increasingly smaller health pool. This kind of feels like the game’s main difficulty setting, but it feels almost arbitrary at times and I just didn’t understand it.

Try Hard Guides was provided with a PC review copy of this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles in the Game Reviews section of our website! Gun Jam is available on Steam.