A boomer shooter made using a Quake engine? You can’t sign me up fast enough. MeowGun: Hell Denizen does indeed look and feel like Quake (as it should, given the engine), but it has one major difference that very much separates it from its inspiration. Aside from that, though, it’s a competent boomer shooter that doesn’t stand out or excel in most ways, including its oftentimes unmemorable level design and enemy encounters that can get a bit redundant. But the action is intense and ridiculous enough to make it worth playing all the same.
MeowGun: Hell Denizen is unique in that its player character seems to be more on the cutesy, sillier side. Her name is MeowMeow, and she is some sort of cat person. I was interested in seeing what a cutesy boomer shooter made in the vein of Quake would be like, but this game doesn’t seem all that interested in doing anything with that premise. MeowMeow talks, but her voice actor’s performance is monotone and kind of grating, plus she mostly just talks in pop culture references. The levels and enemies all seem like they could be in any normally gritty game, too. It’s all a bit of a missed opportunity to make a cutesy boomer shooter.
In terms of content, the game has five episodes, all with five main levels and one secret level. The last episode is a bonus episode that requires players to finish the other four to unlock, but it’s also a series of arena levels, which is both my favourite part of the game and also a stark contrast to the other four’s traditional key-hunting levels. If you’ve played a boomer shooter, you know the drill for those. You start the level and need to work your way through by finding keys and unlocking doors. While most of these games have mapping systems, MeowGun: Hell Denizen doesn’t. You’ll need to find where to go the old-fashioned way.
The issue here is that the level design in the game isn’t all that great. It’s not bad, mind you. It’s mostly competent, although I often found myself getting lost and wandering a fair amount. The game’s first episode is mostly incredibly clear in terms of design, though, as it’s built with quick clears in mind. There’s one spot in the fifth map that’s a bit unclear, but it’s easy enough to blast through the whole episode in half an hour or so. The other main episodes have much larger, confusing levels, however, which often saw me taking 20 minutes to clear one map.
Episodes don’t tend to have a general theme, and MeowGun: Hell Denizen‘s levels can sort of blend together. A lot of them aren’t memorable and lack a sense of place, which makes it easier to get turned around. The levels can get fairly monotonous for this reason, too, but there are some surprising standouts here and there. One of the best levels in the game takes place aboard a spaceship, complete with anti-gravity sections that have you move around by floating. This level culminates in a boss battle, as well, when the previous two final episode maps lacked them. There are a few similarly good, memorable levels in the game, but most of them are a bit of a blur.
Luckily, the combat is truly where the game shines. The game has an absolute ton of weapons, with each ammo type having two guns, each with its own alt-fire. The selection is massive, and some weapons aren’t common in specific episodes. For instance, the shotgun obviously uses shotgun shells, but so do the explosive dual pistols. I didn’t find a shotgun at all in Episode 3, and there are numerous similar examples.
As for the arsenal itself, you’ve got single and dual magnums, a minigun, the aforementioned shotgun and its alt, a machine gun, dual uzis, a grenade launcher, rocket launcher, flame gun, electric gun, plasma gun, railgun, and nuke weapons. There’s a lot here.
The shooting feels a bit light, but it’s also really satisfying. By default, you really can’t carry much ammo, so I was going through it fast, but this is obviously because you’re meant to switch between weapons. Sadly, there’s no weapon wheel and, for whatever reason, my middle mouse scroll doesn’t cycle through weapons at all. My mouse has a side scroll wheel, which is what was designated as the scroll wheel here by default. Weirdly, if you don’t have the very next weapon in the weapon order, you can’t swap with the scroll wheel either. This meant that the only way to change weapons was to use the number keys directly.
There’s a decent number of enemy types on display in MeowGun: Hell Denizen, but the game doesn’t do a great job of balancing them out. For most of the game, I felt like enemy compositions were consistently static instead of slowly introducing new enemy types. This leads to enemy encounters feeling more monotonous than they might have otherwise. The enemies themselves, much like the levels, just aren’t all that memorable. I wish they were more in line with the protagonist, but they mostly just look like generic demons. It’s not a stretch to say that the game sort of feels like someone made Doom in a Quake engine for this reason, and due to the way the levels are.
But if it is like Doom in a Quake engine, then the enemy numbers and the like are akin to Serious Sam. This game can often throw hundreds of enemies at you in just a single level. This is where MeowGun: Hell Denizen shines. Levels are at their best when they’re action-packed, and I had a lot of fun decimating hordes of demons this way. There are occasional issues with this, as enemy groups can easily spawn directly on top of you, killing you in short order. This isn’t a constant occurrence at least, and, with default settings, you have lives too.
There are multiple options with this. You can turn lives off, turn mid-level saving off, or keep both. You can accrue new lives if you have scoring activated, too, but you can also get more by finding lost kittens. As such, MeowGun: Hell Denizen is pretty lenient, plus you can even change enemy settings or allow yourself to carry far more ammo. On the normal difficulty, the game feels very middle-of-the-road and isn’t all that challenging, but turning the difficulty up also throws even more enemies at you (I think there are over 6,000 enemies in normal mode alone).
On top of the levels, there are also 10 survival maps, plus there’s co-op. The survival maps, much like the regular levels, have a pretty surprising amount of customization available, plus you can start a new game off on any level you like. If you just do the main four episodes on normal, MeowGun: Hell Denizen should take a minimum of 5 hours, but if you load saves a lot that number can easily balloon. The game length will also hit over 6 hours if you do the secret levels. Obviously, this isn’t a long game, but it’s decent value for the cost.
I very much liked when MeowGun: Hell Denizen had me repeatedly blasting hordes of enemies, even if I found a lot of its levels to be bland or confusing (or both). If you’re looking for a boomer shooter that scratches the Quake itch, albeit with huge enemy groups, you’ll like what this game offers, even if you find the level and enemy designs to be a bit too pedestrian. But the price is right and the shooting is frenetic, so as long as you don’t mind that, there’s fun to be had.
MeowGun: Hell Denizen: MeowGun's levels and enemies are on the dull side, but the ridiculous action and huge amount of enemies makes it worth playing as long as you can look past its weaknesses. – Andrew Farrell
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