Squirrel with a Gun (PlayStation 5) review "A Nutty Idea"

It's not all too surprising that something named Squirrel with a Gun would be weird, and you immediately get that impression during the opening cutscene. The camera pans around inside a supposedly-secure room, guarding some odd-looking top secret device in the center, and it seems like nothing will get to it; that is, unless an inconspicuous squirrel enters through a roof hatch. One thing leads to another, the squirrel swallows the device WHOLE because it resembles a giant acorn, an agent trips and falls when running into the room, drops a pistol, and that's how we get SwaG.

In a span of a few minutes, you lead the unnamed creature—let's just call the squirrel Peanut for simplicity's sake—through corridors against agents and platform-jump over lava. As you shoot these black-suited and shade-wearing agents, you realize firing a weapon isn't so easy, because with every bullet unleashed, Peanut is propelled back, prompting you to readjust your acorn-shaped reticle. Strangely, landing a headshot only stuns agents, but this gives an opportunity to execute a scripted attack sequence. Here, depending on the weapon equipped, a cutscene ensues where the squirrel lands a Looney Tunes-style beatdown.

It's an adequate starting point teaching the basics of attacking, jumping, and climbing, and you're expecting to do more of this in these condensed spaces. However, once you climb out of the "secure" area, you end up in a neighborhood filled with agents and civilians roaming about.

Within seconds, civilians will surround Peanut, take out their phone for a picture, and jump for joy at the encounter, causing small acorns to fall out of their... armpits? They will then annoyingly follow wherever you go, which you can stop by climbing on their back and snapping their necks; don't worry, they get right back up, but will now fear you. Even better, if you have a firearm, you can hold'em up and get more small acorns. If you're feeling especially demented, you can lure a civilian to a nearby house with lava floor, get them to fall into the liquid death, and then watch on as their body endlessly ragdoll when trying to revive.

Shockingly, there's actual structure to SwaG; similar to Rare's collectathons, opening access to the next neighborhood area requires unlocking things through collecting. To do this, you have to swallow more "big acorns," but to do this, you have to complete objectives, or perform subterfuge on unsuspecting civilians or agents. Sometimes in order to do that, you need to collect smaller acorns—which are often used to refill your health meter— so you can unlock deadlier weapons to aid your cause; shooting a rocket launcher into a crowd of agents is a gratifying sight. Also, latter objectives in an area often require a combination of big and small acorns to unlock a unique item.



As you may have suspected, the objectives are also goofy. From sabotaging a propane tank at a cookout to befriending a cowboy at target practice, there's no shortage of absurd situations. Some of these are pretty straightforward, but others require a little bit more to unravel. One early example involves intruding a fenced house surrounded by landmines; there's only one way in—the dangerous way—which kills instantly if you dare venture. Clearly there's a solution, and inspecting the general area results in discovering a very helpful item for Peanut. Then there's the wedding incident: in terms of design, the amount of content and "lore" crunched around a small house is commendable.

SwaG's comedic approach and gameplay-style makes it fall in line with other "animal nuisance" titles like Goat Simulator, Untitled Goose Game, or DEEEER Simulator, a genre of games known for fluctuating levels of quality. SwaG does have issues, with the most blatant one being the "neighborhood" itself. The term is used liberally here as each area has barely any houses, as they just exist to place objectives in certain spots. Because of this, and thanks to Peanut's size difference compared to everything else, there are chunks of wide empty spaces as you travel from one place to another.



If the game had tons of objectives to perform and things to do, this wouldn't be such a big problem. Unfortunately, SwaG's main issue is that there isn't much to do, which is something you don't realize until the final location is reached; having just three areas and two boss fights—the latter having a great heavy metal ballad blaring over them—the game concludes when it feels like it's really starting to take off. Once you finish the main objectives and watch the finale, the only real thing left to do is mess with the roaming population. But even this quickly becomes repetitive when you snap someone's neck or blast a shotgun in someone's face a dozen or so times, only to see them quickly revive and go about their day.

SwaG never gives you the impression that it's trying to be Grade A material, but that shouldn't excuse its shortcomings. The game has structure and goals, combat is okay, and the humor is silly enough to be tolerable, but it always feels like the devs never tap into the full potential of this goofy title about a squirrel running amok. For what it is, Squirrel with a Gun is amusing enough for being a gimmick, but only consider giving this collectathon a try if it's on sale and you want a brief change of pace from playing a serious, taxing game; change Peanut into a yellow dress and a cowboy hat, and go around striking fear into the hearts of those ragdoll-based humans!

Community review by dementedhut (November 27, 2024) Bought Squirrel with a Gun in November, played and completed in November, collected all the trophies in November, and submitted a review for it in November. I guess I failed the challenge.