Cloudhead’s Pistol Whip can transform from super easy to ultra hard depending which style you want to try. What’s your style?
Some weapon and modifier combinations in Pistol Whip can turn a track into a groove-driven dance fest while others make it something quite like the most extreme moments of The Matrix, when bullets rain from everywhere. Are you looking for leg day, do you want to practice your aim, or do you want a top score on a board that’s so extraordinarily difficult that only a handful of players worldwide have ever beaten a full level? Depending which modifiers you activate, the same map with the same number of enemies emerging from the same locations can feel very different.
The green modifiers in the top row of the Pistol Whip menu generally make the game easier while red ones in the bottom row make it harder. You can combine those with dual wield and a range of weapon types, including particularly satisfying sawed off shotgun-like boomsticks or the “Brawler” melee mode that includes John Wick’s deadly pencil.
Jonathan Hackett of Cloudhead Games dug into the most popular play styles in search of the five best ways to play the game. He curated this list with UploadVR, looking to highlight some of the ways people have started to enjoy the 28-track version of the game they released in mid-2021, with the new styles system and Smoke & Thunder campaign. Pistol Whip has come a long way since launch in 2019 when it debuted on Quest and PC VR with only 10 tracks, and once you’ve completed the bite-sized Smoke & Thunder and 2089 campaigns, then the styles system is how you can keep Pistol Whip fresh.
You’ve got a lot of ways to play Pistol Whip. Cloudhead is inviting players to share their favorite styles on social media with the hashtag #PistolWhipWYS. After sitting down with Hackett and hashing it out, here’s the curated list of the five best ways to play starting with target practice and workout modes, and progressing to bullet hell and eventually introducing players to the disorder and deadeye modifiers that are key to the highest levels of the game:
We’ll have more coverage of Pistol Whip later this week and throughout the month as part of Upload Access in December! We’re also updating our review to incorporate two years of updates to the game and talking to the developers about Pistol Whip’s next steps.
