Despite his name, the game's titular character uses other weapons too. However, his signature jump shotgun, which cannot be dropped, is special for its wild recoil which allows him to overcome the limitations of his stumpy legs to get some respectable air time. Those other weapons actually serve principal combat function as well as aiding in mobility - in addition to keeping the player character in the air for the duration of sustained fire, they also allow for small hops where the shotgun jump would be excessive. Ammunition is infinite, but magazines aren't bottomless, and reloads happen only upon touching firm ground.
While the jump shotgun is formidable at close range, it has a capacity of only three shots, too wide a spread, very short range, and the aforementioned strong recoil, which is great for acrobatics, but a potential liability in combat. An unspectacular pistol is provided to compensate for these shortcomings. Fortunately, some extremely effective weapons are randomly dropped by enemies, to replace the default pistol. Balancing went out of the window completely, in the name of the fun factor; as a result some of those guns are noticeably better than others. Although the carried weapon gets lost irrecoverably upon getting hit, reverting to the pistol, a new gun is found almost immediately.
The player character can take a hit, which knocks his heart out of him, but it can be recovered by catching it. Not only is the heart always close by, it also doesn't fly away and even slowly drifts toward the player character when chased. In addition, levels are very short and have many invisible checkpoints throughout.
Decent degree of deftness on the mouse is required to play at default settings because the shotgun has to be discharged in the opposite direction to the intended jump's vector, and the same crosshair is used to aim the weapon in the other hand to engage enemies. It can get pretty frantic, even though aim assist is aggressive, and regular enemies do not have too much health. Sadly, enemies cannot inflict friendly fire upon each other, but they can - and do - giddily fall into environmental hazards. There is a convenient accessibility setting to lower game speed if it all gets a bit too much.
Bugs encountered were relatively minor: two of them had to do with the pipes very rarely sending the player character and projectiles from a specific weapon in the opposite direction to the one indicated. One other possible bug, also rare, made a certain ambushing enemy extra cautious; he refused to pop out of his puddle of crimson smoke, where he could not be damaged.
Achievements are awarded for completing levels without getting hit, clearing them of all enemies, and beating par times.
Two entirely optional bonus campaigns are featured. One of them is a reimagining of the developer's previous title. It features several mechanics not present in the main campaign: a slow motion diving mechanic, swinging ropes, and skateboards, which are glued to the character's feet this time to prevent losing them. The other is a collection of early, noticeably more difficult levels with more demanding layouts and very tight par times.
A bit of a shame the antagonist could only be bothered to come up with that one retort.
