We were on the edge of Milton Keynes near Bletchley when the drug epidemic began.
I said something like, “This is all my fault. I shouldn’t have let you drive.” Suddenly, there was a terrible roar all around us as my traveling companion, with catnip flowing through her furry little body, lost control of the car and it barreled toward Pinewood Studios at a hundred miles an hour with the top open.
Luckily, we were completely lost on a country road, so when we stopped, there was nothing to hit. Next to me, an airbag was gently deployed by a claw. I sat there, dazed and confused, as if time had stood still. I wondered if I had made the right decision. I thought about what had led me to that decision. I thought about Squirrel with a Gun.
Manage Cookie Settings
Squirrel with a Gun (SWAG for short) is a video game in which you play as a squirrel with a gun. Aside from this cool core premise, is there anything else to the game? The short answer is no. The slightly less short answer is, really no. The long answer is, maybe yes, depending on who you are.
From the moment you boot up the game, you play as a squirrel doing things with guns. You barely leave the opening room when a stumbling guard hands you your first pistol, and from there you jump from Uzis and shotguns to RPG-style grenade launchers. You use them to fight off agents, the mysterious Men in Black who you eventually blacklist, and do some platform jumping to grab acorns and other goodies.
Once you make it out of the underground bunker you start in, you’re presented with an open world to explore, which starts out as a cozy little suburb, with some additional areas gradually opening up and added as you progress. Aside from a few boss fights and sections that open up these areas, you’re generally running around like you would in Goat Simulator or Untitled Goose Game, interacting with different locations and situations to earn gold and bronze acorns, which you’ll need to unlock spawn points for guns and vehicles.
While it’s probably a little unfair to compare these little missions to those in Goat Simulator 3, the latest entry in the fun “animals running around and causing mayhem” genre that’s become popular, a lot of them do feel a bit like slightly inferior imitations of what you did in that game in terms of complexity and refinement. The same can be said for the little costumes you collect for your squirrels, and even the battles with tanks. But the thing is, when it’s not doing something similar to Goat Simulator, Squirrel With A Gun is a lot of fun.
While there are some limitations in areas like combat with agents, the game comes into its own when it lives up to the intentions implied by the Bond-themed parody of the “Squirrel with a Gun” theme that plays every time you enter the main menu. It’s all about action. It’s all about sprinting, bouncing, and screaming through the streets. It’s all about climbing trees and flagpoles, then leaping into a group of agents below, managing to move on your feet fast enough to avoid their shots, climbing onto their shoulders, and then breaking their necks.
It’s about slowing down time so you can try a flyby with a sniper rifle because you saw a big gun while jumping between a floating bouncy castle and a platform with a giant slide and couldn’t resist swapping out an Uzi. It’s about firing rockets at the ground in a riot suit and getting slammed headfirst into the air while your squirrel screams like the GTA protagonist who accidentally stepped out of a helicopter because someone pressed the wrong button.
It’s about some animals being incredibly goofy little people who are also basically secret agents. To be honest, I’m not sure it does enough to capture that in its short runtime – which is totally fine, by the way; a game like this shouldn’t be a 60-hour slog. It’s at its best when it’s convincing me that my cat is going to be the next James Bond.
After all, her fur makes her look like she’s wearing a tiny tuxedo, she’s picky about how her food is served, and she can move like a ninja. She can find a way to teleport herself out of a room with a closed door that Harry Houdini would be trapped in. She can climb anything. She can run across rooftops. She can land from any height. She’s politely spoken. She’s privilege personified. And she can — and will — kill you.
Back in the car, I came to myself. We were on the road, the cat making the engine whirr. In the rearview mirror, I caught a glimpse of her small yellow eyes. Even though she was only three and 28 at the same time, she still looked a little naive. I wasn’t sure if she was ready for the brutal profession of an actor, but I had faith.
I’m sure Sean Connery, Roger Moore, and Daniel Craig would have been ecstatic when they handed her her first prop pistol in an audition.
