Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns (DLC)

Operation Guns is a crossover DLC for the bullet-heaven horde-survival game Vampire Survivors, developed by poncle in collaboration with Konami. It pulls characters, weapons, enemies, and music straight from the Contra franchise and wraps them in the familiar VS loop of auto-attack, level up, and evolve your loadout into something ridiculous. You need the base game to play it, but if you already own Vampire Survivors, jumping in is instant. The content haul is generous for a small DLC. You get 12 Contra-themed characters, including Bill Rizer, Lance Bean, Brad Fang, Browny, Lucia, and Sheena Etranzi, each arriving with a signature starter weapon tied to their series history. There are 11 base weapons that each evolve into a second, more broken form, giving you 22 new tools total. The Long Gun fires straight in your movement direction, the C-U Laser punches through enemy lines, the Spread Shot fans out in a wide arc, and the Homing Miss tracks down stragglers. Evolutions work differently here than in the base game: each one requires a consumable silver Weapon Power-Up briefcase plus a specific passive item. The briefcases are scarce (four per run on Neo Galuga), which adds a real planning layer to your build choices. You can only hold one at a time, so putting together a pure Contra build takes deliberate prep work rather than just grabbing whatever looks powerful at level-up. The main new stage is Neo Galuga, a large horizontal map that stitches together a jungle, a ruined city, and an alien zone pulled from Contra's back catalogue. It houses Contra Force enemies, winged capsule pickups for temporary buffs, and familiar boss encounters including the Big Fuzz. Beating the adventure mode, which reviewers estimate at around 4-5 hours, unlocks Hectic Highway, a bonus stage where you ride a motorcycle along a straight road and the map scrolls automatically. Hectic Highway has a polarizing reputation: the side-scrolling format strips out the free movement that makes VS tick, and any chest you miss disappears off-screen permanently, making weapon evolution a frustrating puzzle on that particular stage. It's a fine bonus but not the draw. The adventure mode and Neo Galuga are. The DLC also ships with a substantial music pack, including original Contra Hard Corps tracks and several new VS-style remixes. The weaknesses are small but real. Not all 22 weapons earn their slot: some community feedback singles out the Short Gun and its evolution Prototype B as particularly underwhelming. The briefcase-gated evolution system, while novel, can feel restrictive when you are still learning which weapons pair well together. And players hoping for the kind of world-building depth found in Tides of the Foscari may find Operation Guns a little lighter on lore and stage variety. What it absolutely nails is the feeling of escalation. By the time you are popping Contra missiles for 999 damage across the whole screen and watching the Spread Shot evolve into Prototype C, it plays exactly like the chaotic power fantasy Vampire Survivors promises. If you have any soft spot for the Contra series, this DLC will feel like a love letter. If you just want more Vampire Survivors content with a strong mechanical twist on weapon evolution, there is plenty to keep you busy across multiple unlock runs.

Alex · Scout Team

Catch-all

Be the first to comment on Vampire Survivors: Operation Guns (DLC).