![]() ![]() Suddenly the action will just dry up and there you are, all dressed up with no one to shoot. Yeah, you can chat while you wait, or Alt+Tab out to go check Reddit or something, but it’s still frustrating, especially after a match or two when you’ve got a good group. The first is the inevitable problem of an awesome game without enough players, which is to say long queue times waiting for a crew. This being an online-only game also means there are two big obstacles to enjoyment. This being a multiplayer title, you can imagine how polite, helpful and actually co-operative people are. Then things rapidly turn into a shouting match as the pilot just ambles around aimlessly, the gunners can’t get anything in their sights and the engineer never stops moving. It all sounds easy enough until you get in the air. Literally as he usually is the only crew member with an extinguisher, but also figuratively as he hustles around slapping a hammer on anything that needs repairs. Like all great naval conflicts, in Guns the successful engagement is all about positioning, so the pilot must watch the skies and give his gunners targeting angles. The pilot needs to steer, but not just maneuvering. The gunners covering their limited firing arcs need to watch for enemies and shoot when they can, repair when they can’t. Which is why you all have to work together. The guns also all have different ranges and rotations, which seems like a simple enough idea…until you spend time lining up the perfect shot…only to have it ruined when the pilot banks right and the target slips out of your firing arc. ![]() Not only that, but gunners have about six different kinds of specialized ammunition to mod all those guns with (though most everyone just slaps the fire-proof rounds in to make the engineers lives easier). There’s even a harpoon to spear a ship and drag it closer. These ships come armed with quite the assortment of wonderful toys, from machine guns to flak cannons to flame throwers and flare guns. What is this world you just brush the surface of with cannon fire? I’m dying to find out.Ĭannon fire isn’t quite expansive enough though. There are ships sailing on the sky, men and women pushing metal and gas and wood by the strength of their arms and will and for what? What spurred this creation? Whence came the drive? This isn’t even to mention the tottering wreckage piled akimbo in the desert, or the arctic outposts and canyon spans that you fight over. I know fans of the genre won’t care too much as it’s the struggle that matters with these games, not the setting, but it seems such a shame that a beautiful setting like this is so poorly fleshed out. Oh, I know, it’s after the millennium and motives are incidental, but seriously, what possible value is there in blowing other ships out of the sky? Military superiority? Salvage rights? Victory over bad manners? ![]() That being said, Guns does fall short where all such titles falter. The result is one of the most compelling multiplayer games of recent memory with a gorgeous backdrop and atmosphere skinned and bleak and somehow beautiful. What makes Guns special then, aside from skinning, is that instead of just making a floating platform with gun emplacements, the developers added just enough sailing mechanics to make things interesting and force everyone in a crew to work together for survival. You pick your role - gunner, engineer or pilot in this case, queue up for a crew and have at your enemies. At base it is just like any other multiplayer PvP title. Guns of Icarus Online is a gorgeously meaty game that makes you long for a clear sky, a strong wind and the tang of gunpowder on the air. If you think that a little flowery…well, it is, but this game inspires flights of fancy, or at least some fancy flying which is close enough. We are the Guns of Icarus, it suits that we die in fire and surprise. No one looks up from the range finders or the rattle of malcontent engines. We fight over the pale broken things below, or towers, or ruins and no one stops just to breathe. We fight here now, over a space that seems so large despite the crowding. The inevitable crackle of fire and the sharp report of cannon. Now though, now she hides as the air fills with more and more balloons. It used to be that there was so much room. The wind wild around you and the creak and roll of the boards beneath your feet was enough to make you walk to the edge, make you think about jumping out into that maddening air, smiling all the way down. Beyond it the long arc of heaven and low line of earth met somewhere so far ahead it was a blur. Used to be that the mists and clouds would pull apart like ginned cotton, the pure, dense white shredding in tendrils and snarls against the teeth of sunlight and sky. ![]()
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