Guns of Icarus | a Review
originally published on 10/08/2020;
Hello everyone, I am the most impressive G.E.M.Simov, a classy gentleman who has played the best Steampunk game in the world (Arcanum) and I am talking about another steampunk game on this day. That game is Guns of Icarus.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it. Also, I am a gameplay designer and a writer so I got the credentials to talk shit.
GAMEPLAY
Guns of Icarus is an interesting game, in the sense that it is based around being played by a team of people, who need to communicate a lot so as to operate an airship and keep it afloat, while also firing their weapons at other teams like themselves.
The game is played with a mouse and a keyboard, with the keyboard being used primarily for movement and some utilities, and the mouse being used to interact with objects in the world. There are 3 types of playable classes - Gunners, Engineers and Pilots.
The Pilots can navigate the airships and wield one tool. Most of the game, for a Pilot, is spent moving the ship about and battling the controls whilst praying that the relatively unresponsive vessel at their hands does move in a manner somewhat similar to what the player wants. Ship mobility is very, very limited, in the sense that it is very difficult and quite lacking in enjoyment. The movements appear to be simulating a realistic manner of motion for a floating air-bubble based airship, but the sheer fact of the matter is that this aspect of the game is very, very unappealing, even though I could see myself enjoying it a lot more if there was around 25% extra maneuverability added to the navigation of an airship.
The Gunners have 4 ammunition options and get bonuses to how well they can man the guns of the ship, while wielding 2 tools. Playing as a Gunner is one of the more enjoyable things the player can do whilst experiencing Guns of Icarus Online, as the gun-play, even though not inclusive of handheld firearms, is quite decent. There are different types of guns, each having their own type of firing, with different projectiles and varying missile speeds. Gunners need to focus on shooting down the enemy ships.
The Engineers have 4 tools and can sprint around the ship. The Engineer’s main task is to keep all the facilities of the airship operational, so as to avoid losing some, or all, of the ship’s ability to move, fight or even stay afloat. Engineer gameplay revolves around them running around the ship and applying different solutions to damaged machinery, be it through extinguishing fires or repairing said machinery by banging it with a hammer.
All three of the playable classes need to work in unison to keep the ship operational and to wipe out enemy ships. The game is very good on paper, but the fact of the matter is that the implementation could have used a lot more work.
Guns take incredibly long amounts of time to reload, which, although somewhat reasonable, is still something I would not do. The best way to make a player enjoy a game is by presenting them with something to do, and waiting for a gun to reload is not them doing something. The solution provided by the game is to use the power of the Gunners, which allows them to speed up reloading… Although that seems to be applied only in concept, and I see no difference in the speed at which I reload a gun while using my Gunner ability and while not using it.
Another solution to this issue of ‘doing nothing’ is to have the players, while reloading the guns, leave their posts and go look for other guns to man or parts of the ship that need fixing, as they do still have 2 tools at their disposal.
However, the problem arises when one takes into account that there are 4 total guns on an airship, and five other bits of machinery that need to be looked after. There being 4 total members of a crew, the likelihood that 3 out of the total 4 guns are manned is high. Not to mention that not all guns are facing the same direction, and some cannot be used to fire at an enemy ship that is at a certain side of the vessel, thus making it very difficult to actually utilize all guns at once. Most often there will be 2 free guns that can fire and 2 free guns that have no way of sending projectiles towards the target.
There is always the option to go and give the machinery a wack to get it repaired, but the idea of a Gunner makes me think that people, who are playing a Gunner, wouldn’t want to do that, instead picking to toil away at figuring out how to hit the enemy. Not, of course, when there is the Engineer class that’s made for fixing up the ship.
The issue with the Engineer class, unlike the Gunner class, is that there is a mixture of too much to do and too many restrictions on how one can do it. Any example would be how, as soon as the most integral part of the ship starts taking damage, the Engineer can wait it out until it has very low structural wholeness and then give it a whack with their hammer. However, within the next 6 seconds, during which the Engineer cannot repair that same piece of machinery with anything, due to having repaired it with their hammer, the enemy can absolutely calmly deal all the damage needed to bring said piece of machinery down.
It feels as if the amount of healing one can do, as an Engineer, is not enough to outdo the amount of damage that can be done by a Gunner. That would be fine and dandy, if not for the simple detail that there is no solution to this problem, other than having the Pilot perform miracles and somehow bob and weave with a massive, incredibly slow and heavy ship through enough firepower to shred a car in seconds.
The game, itself, is flawed, in the way that once an opening is had, that is it. The entire match is decided by the skill of the Pilots. No matter how good the Engineers on a team are, they cannot heal any better than what any single Engineer can do. 3 Engineers can sustain a single bit of machinery as well as 1 Engineer can, because a piece of machinery, once repaired, gets a cooldown on itself and it cannot be repaired again before that cooldown expires.
This makes Engineers powerless to deal with the high damage that gets done by Gunners in the enemy ship, and so the friendly ship goes down. But this cannot be fixed, because it is not a healthy alternative to have Engineers be able to out heal the damage of two guns concentrating on one piece of machinery.
There is one more thing. Important for me, at least. This game has 849 achievements. Each achievement grants experience to the player in certain classes. Meaning that the player inadvertently completes achievements by playing the game. That is all well and good… But the achievements are all grindy and ridiculously stupid. Not many of them are actual achievements, requiring the completion of some kind of task or challenge. Very boring and uninspired design on that front as well.
The dependency on teamwork, the flaws in each class’ opportunities to perform and the evident lack of balance when it comes to the impact of each class make this a very disappointing experience. It’s good in concept, but it is not executed all that well. 1/3
PRESENTATION
The game is a 3D, First Person walking simulator with First Person Shooter Turret Section influences. As such, it features a 3D world with well done modeling and nicely applied textures. The music is very lackluster, as there felt to be just 3 or 4 tracks that looped on and on, but the title screen song is quite nice, reminiscent of that wondrous melody that plays when one boots up Arcanum.
The theme of the game is quite nice, as I personally enjoy it greatly. Steampunk is close enough to fantasy and distant enough from modernity that it is a meld of both, although Guns of Icarus is, as hinted at by its name, much more inspired by modernity than it lets on. The look of the game is relatively stylized, which is not a bad thing, but the environments are just dreadfully drab and boring. A desert. A ruined city. A coast with crashed ships. And each has one color associated with it. Orange for the desert. Dark green for the ruined city. Muted blue for the coast with crashed ships. 2/3
STORY
The story of Guns of Icarus goes as follows:
Industrial revolution began but mankind is bad so they did war and everything went to shit. But there’s like a bunch of factions that remained and now they are going to war with each other again. There is no story to speak of, none whatsoever, although, in defense of the game, it is, supposedly, a Simulation game… But also an Adventure game.
Apparently, there are two different types of Guns of Icarus, one that costs money and one that doesn’t. The one that does cost money, and still has micro-transactions in it, also has a tiny amount of story. Alas, a tiny amount of story, when the premise is what it has been so far, would not do any good, as far as I am concerned. 0/3
LEGENDARY POINT
Does this game--No.
It does not. It could have - if the Gameplay was a bit smoother, if there was more to it. Alas, there ain’t much more to it. 0/1
CONCLUSION
3/10. It's a disappointment with a promising concept, and I do not recommend it. Of course, I could consider playing it with friends, but, alas, playing a bad game with friends is still playing a bad game.
On the wall of shame, I hang this game. I look at it and shed a tear. My own perception has branded it a disgrace. It's not good.