Gunfire Reborn review

Gunfire Reborn is a roguelite first-person shooter that's entirely focused on loot. In each run, you are constantly finding various weapons, ability upgrades, and passive modifiers in an effort to mold yourself into the perfect soldier to battle against waves of increasingly complicated and powerful waves of enemies. The experience at times can feel like a slow burn, but Gunfire Reborn is quite possibly the best way to do some cooperative shooting on mobile.

Furry FPS

There is very little setup to Gunfire Reborn. You play as one of a handful of gun-toting anthropomorphic animals who are tasked with blasting their way through dungeons and slaying bosses. There's no real story that unfolds along the way, unless you count the evolution of the loadout and abilities you equip to your character.

As you load directly into new biomes to fight the next sets of tough enemies, you need to keep your weapons and abilities up to snuff. Enemies may drop random weapons with procedurally generated modifiers like "50% chance to spawn a ball of lightning" or "reloads 75% faster off an empty clip" and certain levels have chests, hidden stages, or predictable checkpoint spots where you can pick up passive talents and spend coins you've been collecting to upgrade your existing gear, heal up, etc.

Multiplayer mayhem

As a shooter, Gunfire Reborn isn't particularly complicated. There's some basic traversal options and a few guns with unique firing mechanics, but most of the game is reliant on your ability to circle strafe or use environmental cover effectively while being smart about how to tune your character with the random upgrades you find along the way. Between runs you also get the ability to spend a special currency on unlocking and upgrading abilities that provide permanent power boosts to help you get further along each time you start a new game.

The run, gun, die, repeat loop of Gunfire Reborn is nothing new, but it helps that its guns and abilities intertwine with an elemental system that adds a lot of variability to how you build your characters on each run. Also, perhaps the biggest plus side of the game is its ability for up to four players to team up on runs, which makes for a more chaotic experience that feels less like you're stuck on an endless upgrade treadmill... at least by yourself.

Longtime looter

There are definitely unique aspects to how Gunfire Reborn's abilities work, but if I had to lay a complaint about the game it's that so many of them are passive or simply reliant on procedural generation to the point that none of them really work to make the game feel unique to control. The voxel-like in-game graphics also don't help the game look unique, as they somewhat deaden a lot of the inspired character and art direction present here.

On a final note, it's worth noting that Gunfire Reborn may feel best with other players, but run lengths can go on for over an hour which might be hard to manage playing on a mobile device. If you're playing single player this is way less of an issue, especially since Gunfire Reborn has a good checkpointing system, but playing solo can also definitely makes the game feel a lot less lively.

The bottom line

The best times I've had with Gunfire Reborn were when I set aside the time to matchmake with other players and play an extended session. I'd even go as far to say it's now my go-to cooperative game. The game is still enjoyable as-is playing solo, but the long upgrade treadmill and somewhat generic look and feel can make the single player experience feel a bit dull by comparison.