Guns of Icarus Review

Guns of Icarus Online has an interesting back-story to its development. Muse Games, the developers of Guns of Icarus Online were originally designing the game for another company. However it became clear to Muse that this company did not care for the creative vision Muse had for the game, so the game quickly began being funded out of Muse’s own money. Finally the game was released in 2012 and has recently become very popular. As interesting as the development story is, does Guns of Icarus deserve the popularity it has.

The gameplay in Guns of Icarus is very unique and fun. You and 3 other teammates pilot an airship and fight with other airship pilots in an array of game types. Each member of the team each have a different role to play. There are 3 roles to choose from: Gunner, Engineer and Captain. Captain pilots the ship, Gunner shoots stuff and Engineers fix up the ship when you inevitably get shot by other players.  Each player has an important role to play and you can’t succeed without all roles being play. Due to the co-operative nature of the game, playing with 3 friends is far more fun than playing with random other people. When playing I could really see that a team effort is required to win matches. All members need to pull their weight in order to succeed.

Manning the guns.

The game is in the first person and plays much like a first person shooter, however instead of being armed with guns you are armed with mallets and wrenches to repair the ship. Most of game time is spent running around the ship hitting the individual parts of the ship with your tools. After a while this can become boring, however the battles with other ships are extremely fun.

Running frantically around the ship repairing the hull as the enemies rain bullets upon you is an exciting and intense experience, and there is nothing else quite like it. The only real problems with the gameplay in Guns of Icarus is that it can get somewhat repetitive, as the thing you do match to match don’t change that much. You’ll spend a lot of your time in each match repairing the ship and less time shooting or piloting. One cool feature is that there are many different types of airship to pilot each with their own advantages and disadvantages. Some ships have more guns than others and some are sturdier than others. This adds a lot of variety to  the game and changes up your play style game to game. In the end the gameplay in  Guns of Icarus is quite fun and unique but can get boring over long play sessions.

There is an in-game purchase system in Guns of Icarus which I found a bit strange because you need to buy the game to begin with. The good thing is that most of these purchases are merely cosmetic and don’t contribute to the outcomes of matches. However I still found this annoying because a game that you already have to pay for charging money in game anyway seems a little cheap.

The in-game store.

For a game produced on such a low budget, Guns of Icarus presents itself very well. The graphics are actually quite nice and stand out among the crowd. The graphics aren’t any way near a triple A production, but for an independently developed game, they are quite impressive. The music in Guns of Icarus is also very impressive. The opening theme is triumphant and epic and suits the games feel. It is truly impressive that such a small dev team could pull this off so well.

The story line in Guns of Icarus is much like Team Fortress 2, in the sense that it isn’t explored much in gameplay but forms a rather well fleshed out back-story. The story is about an alternate history earth where a great war of 1917 would leave the world in utter ruin, society is gone and tribal like groups form. Until the humans re-discover industrial technology. At about this time a guy called Gabriel creates an airship and revolutionizes travel. His legacy spawns ‘The Age of Air’ where air ships  begin popping up everywhere. From this distinct factions formed and began perusing different goals and conflicting with one another. I really like when a game does this, even though the story isn’t explored much in actual gameplay (at the moment) I really respect how Muse Games cared enough about their game that they decided to write a back-story  anyway. Much like TF2, the game wouldn’t have really suffered without a story, but it shows commitment and effort by the developers for them to write a story. I also really like the direction the story took as well, with the whole alternate history idea. I think it’s really unique and I enjoyed learning about it. The only real criticism I can give the story, is that unlike TF2, there are no real nods given to the story in gameplay. In TF2 the characters and maps related to the story in subtle and obvious ways, whereas here there isn’t as much of that. I still have to hand it to Muse Games, the story line they have written is fleshed out and interesting.

This game will last you along while, granted you have some friends to play it with. The gameplay is extremely fun and epic, but it will lose its shine quickly if you are just playing on your own. So some friends to play the game with will add to your experience a lot and keep you hooked. As fun as the game is it is truly reliant on having some friends to play it with to last for the long haul.

Guns of Icarus Online is available through Steam for PC, Mac and Linux.