Buy Heavy Bullets

Super fun and enjoyable, oddly relaxing in a way game. I'm honestly not going to say much about it other than telling you to just get it and play it. It's worth the play. It gets pretty challenging at times which is always awesome. A couple enemys can easily startle you, if you're easily startling that is.

According to Michael from Achievement Hunter when he played the game in his Rage Quit series he calls it a Store Simulator. Since there are many banks and shops in the game.lol Which it obviously isn't I just wanted to quote him since I'm kinda a huge fan of AH.

The moment I start Heavy Bullets I'm assaulted with a minimal bright neon colored title-screen and a trippy melody with hazy vocals blaring over the glitched sounds of the menu like I've stumbled upon some kind of Philip K. Dickian Hotline Miami. I instantly think to myself "Yep this feels like something Devolver Digital would publish." This is of course a very good feeling.

This exceeds any rogue-like FPS before it in every way, and ups the ante by having very well-thought out and carefully planned gameplay. The action and combat are more than solid, intense and the atmosphere is engaging; with enemies that can pop out of bushes killing you in a heartbeat, the panic of realizing you haven't loaded all those bullets you picked up, all powered by a pulsing electronic soundtrack that creeps up on you as you come closer to dangerous areas.

The roguelike elements here work *very* well. You are placed into the thralls of a glitched neon world with harsh and bright hallways randomly generated everytime, the goal is to reach the end of each floor and eventually make it to the 8th floor where you're tasked with resetting a malfunctioning mainframe. Sounds simple, but equipped with only your 6-shot revolver this will prove to be a true test in frustration as there are monsters, turrets, and worms hiding around every corner to whittle away at your already very limited life. The floors are randomly littered with items to help with this, and you'll find banks where if you're playing smart enough you can buy life insurance or deposit money that carry over into your next playthroughs, making things slightly easier each time.

Seriously if you like roguelikes at all buy this game. If you like first person shooters at all, buy this game. If you like crazy artsy games with insanely stylish visuals and trippy sound design, buy this game!

If Wolfenstein 3-D went to college and did fifty tabs of LSD on a dare in his dorm room, you would get Heavy Bullets.

EDIT: Exxe in the comments has denied my review a perfect 10/10 score through lack of Shrek. Here is the new review with the added omission:

"If Wolfenstein 3-D went to college and did fifty tabs of LSD on a dare in his dorm room, you would get Heavy Bullets. Shrek."

Heavy Bullets cuts down most of the fat surrounding games that venture to use the Roguelike genre, a refreshing take after dozens upon dozens of titles that use hidden depth, tons of discoverable combinations and, situational item usage. It’s a bit of a double edged sword but the lack of complexity is a nice alternative. Heavy Bullets pushes everything aside for a much simpler and, at times, more effective method. As a wise prophet once said, “Six bullets… more than enough to kill anything that moves.” And your employer seems to adhere fairly strictly to those words!

Highrise Hunting Grounds is run by some questionably dense people. It’s difficult to tell if they’re sinister or just willfully ignorant of human rights, sending a janitor down into the depths of their intricate hunting grounds to find out why the mainframe is going crazy and turning the park’s security systems against the very people they’re meant to protect. Plopped down into neon hallways that look like they could be very delicious popsicle flavors, all you have is your gun and your wits about you. As you progress through the 8 layers of hell, there are vending machines and hidden secret cases holding useful items like rockets and homing grenades, as well as a few items that make you wonder how they ended up there in the first place. Using the ritual blade will, for instance, harm you for an entire heart’s worth of damage in exchange for giving you back the exact amount of money you’d need to heal that heart back.

The crux of Heavy Bullets’ gameplay loop is simplistic genius. Whenever you fire a bullet from your gun, you have to run over to it and pick it back up again in order to reload it into the revolver. At first you only start with just enough bullets to reload an entire cylinder but you can eventually find, buy, or have bullets given to you through inheritance. There’s a slight margin of error in most rooms near the start but you’ll need to come to grips with your twitch action skills before the halfway point. Messing up a shot will require you to dash into danger, more often than not to recover your rounds, and, even with your Quake-speedrunner pace, you’ll still likely take a hit or two. My heart was pounding in the later stages of the game, even after I had upgrades to increase my reload skill, bullet recovery distance, and extra hearts!

As per the standard for roguelikes, you’ll be dying often as you come to grips with what the game demands of you. This will start off as a tad bit of an annoyance but the game does offer some small level of continuation to ease you into that one run where everything will go right. Available in the vending machines are purchasable items that allow you to pass a certain amount of money you’re carrying into your bank account when you die or, more importantly, the Last Will item which deposits every penny you have on you as well as any bullets, bombs, and keys. You’ll be given the latter three instantly at the start of your next run. This is pretty much the key to being able to afford as many health and stat upgrades as possible during a run. I, myself, had built up almost $1,000 in the bank before my first successful run, during which I spent a good chunk of that reserve.

Just when you start feeling comfortable, the game tosses new enemy types at you and changes up the scenery a little bit. Instead of the simple walls that looked like they could have been gradients on a new-wave CD stacked in Tommy Vercetti’s car, some blinking computer bits and crude technological chrome begin to adorn the walls. You’re also given a flashlight after a certain point, though the game never truly puts you in the complete darkness. Sadly, it only changes so much visually but, then again, you’re hardly really looking at the walls when you’re constantly fighting for your life.

In keeping with the minimalistic approach, the sound design is sparse but executed with razor sharp precision when it counts. Music occasionally cuts through the deafening silence to energize a particularly ballsy suicide run on a full room. Corny musique pipes through the vending machines, coming across more like slot machines tossed out from a casino on the dead end of Vegas city limits and re-purposed. Every creature and malicious turret has a unique sound of their own that you’ll familiarize yourself with rather quickly. Learning the telltale signs of each is key to surviving large and tricky rooms that use tall grass and rocks to block your line of sight. Some players complained about the music’s lack of presence, but I feel the use of silence is extremely important in not only building up the tension of every fight but also to let you listen in on these clues before things get really hectic.

For all that Heavy Bullets does well, though, it comes at the price of not having much in the way of replay value. Once you’ve beaten the final boss you have nothing further to really do. The game’s achievements hint at a few challenges you could try but, in the long run of things, you won’t be able to easily put 100+ hours into this like many other games in the genre. When stacking it up next to games like Eldritch or Fancy Skulls, it hardly has sea legs worth holding onto for more than a few playthroughs. Unless you’re a fan of replaying for the sake of the challenge, 3 heart only runs with no potions like some insane Zelda speedrunner, it just may not be enough. The basic experience, the thrill of that first completion, gives a nice sense of accomplishment and I think the tense silent moments broken up by spurts of greased-lightning violence are exceptionally well done. But having limited ways of killing things presented to you and randomly placed setpieces which you’ll eventually become familiar with will certainly bum out players earlier than usual. Is this enough to dissuade you from picking up the gun? Well, that’s entirely up to you, partner. You just have to ask yourself one question. Did I fire six shots, or only five?

Did you like this review? Please stop by and check it out at RGZ.ca http://rgz.ca/gaming/heavy-bullets-review-6teen-shells-from-a-30-06/ and take a look at my other reviews, as well as our coverage! Thanks for reading!

Heavy Bullets is a low-poly, high-style FPS roguelike set in indoor jungle of sharp-edged rainbows infested with sharp-toothed nightmare creatures. Levels, enemies, items, and even the UI drip with color and unique personality. The glitched-tech sound design and sparse, synth-heavy music compliment the sometimes jolting and often gorgeous environments exceptionally. You've seen first-person roguelikes before, but you've never seen anything like this.

Heavy Bullets is a rogue-lite (not roguelike, which I'll get to later) FPS that ISN'T a terrible game, but not something that I would recommend.

Let's start with some pros and cons:
Pros:
-Level generation is very good and provides a high level of area variety with the occasional secret.
-The ammo system of retrieving your scarce bullets flows very well.
-In my experience, the game performed very, very well. No performance issues.
-Gameplay is fast with little downtime.

Cons:
-The game has VERY LITTLE content, and a pretty good amount of that content isn't very exciting. Within 3 hours of play, I had reached the final boss and experienced most of what the game has to offer.
-The graphics and sound, while part of the game's specific art style, are abysmal.
-Gameplay is VERY unbalanced. You will encounter large numbers of trivial creatures, while occasionally facing off against turrets that are much, much more powerful. While there are plenty of effective strategies I used against these turrets, I found that they are very inconsistent; with buggy mobile varieties that can glitch and shoot through walls, and stationary varieties that can turn their gun a full 180 degrees in the blink of an eye. This makes gameplay against these foes extremely frustrating.
-The game offers the ability to save your money and items for later runs, but this is very slow, boring, and grind-y. This is also the reason why this game should be considered a rogue-lite rather than a true roguelike.

Some other points to consider:
-There is no real story present except for a few lines of start-up text, but this isn't really a bad point in my eyes; I'd rather have no story than an awful story.

Overall, I'd say that Heavy Bullets isn't a bad title to play if you get it on sale (AT LEAST 50% off) or in a Humble Bundle (I got it in the Humble Roguelike Bundle), but you are overpaying if you pay the full $9.99 for it.

Thanks for reading (assuming you did).

Heavy Bullets is a perfect marriage of tough roguelike tropes in a minimalist first-person shooter. A gripping challenge with unease built into all aspects of its designs, there are plenty of incentives to dive into the random locations and die over and over. Reflex gameplay, risk and reward moments, strategic choices, loot options; it may not look like the five or six colors of its universe have a lot to offer, but Heavy Bullets actually has it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XTdzWHRKuog

Full review: http://www.noobfeed.com/reviews/1103/heavy-bullets

As enjoyable as the gameplay is, I can't recommend it. Many people (even with powerful rigs) have huge stuttering issues that get progressively worse as the levels go by. The final bossfight becomes impossible because of them, since at that point of the game the stuttering evolves to at least a second long freezes every 3-4 seconds. For a rogue-lite that punishes death pretty heavily, that's a pretty big issue, yet the developer has abandoned trying to fix it.

This is god damn amazing. Beautiful visual direction and sound design.

The whole mechanic of fetching bullets makes the game a little unforgiving on those lacking good aim, but the large hitboxes of enemies counters that. Though it is easy to get into panic situations which can quickly leave you without ammo and defenseless. Overall the mechanic is pretty unique and certainly makes you improves your aim fast.

I haven't progressed very far in the couple hours I've played, but each playthrough has been unique and the level generation has been pretty good. The ability to store money and items between playthroughs is very nice idea, allowing you to save some things if death is almost certain.

All-in-all, it's a really fun and challenging procedural FPS.

Simple yet stylish, First-Person, Rogue-like excitement. Not quite enough gameplay elements here to make me fall in love, but I do consider this game a good friend.

Textures? Who needs those. Leveling? What does that even mean? What this game excels in, is bringing you to laser focus upon rounding each new corner, and mechanics that encourage you not to look back.

Currently it has some glitchiness: there are many, many frame dropping freezes, especially when "seeing" an enemy after a lull in the action (I have actually lost my best run due to the game freezing my character and magically making my bullets go thru enemies, all at 4 fps).

With some consistent development, additions to the mechanics, and polishing out the bugs, this game could become a 5/5 Star beaut.

Best of luck to the stylin' dev(s).