Guns of Icarus Online Review

Guns of Icarus Online is a multiplayer-only game in which you get to pilot your own airship.

So pull on your goggles and your brown coat because it’s time to kill some Alliance (I may or may not have named my gunship Serenity and spent a few days in a deluded steampunk/Firefly fantasy, shouting “Gorram” and “Shiny” at every possible moment, insisting on calling all of my friends Jayne. “My name’s Steve”. Shut up, Jayne).

Review OVER. Stick that on your website, Muse.

…Okay, a little more detail is probably warranted, so here’s the rundown. You can captain or serve upon one of four different types of ship as the pilot, an engineer, or a gunner. Each has their own different skills to bring to the fray, but in order to win a skirmish, you need to work together with other players, otherwise it all goes to hell pretty quickly.

This doesn’t make Guns of Icarus all that accessible, despite the rapidly growing player base, because it can be daunting diving into a game that doesn’t really have any matchmaking facilities. You’re going to be pushing against the tide for a little while, unless you’ve got some buddies you can shanghai into service – one well organised ship with team members organised over teamspeak or Skype can easily outdo two bigger ships crewed by people jumping into random maps. It might not be an advantage in the strictest sense of the word but it makes the game feel a little unbalanced. In game communication does exist of course but it’s never going to be as effective as going into a skirmish with gamers you know well.

Menus and leveling systems add an RPG aspect that’s apparently necessary in every game ever released these days – although it does make playing the game more rewarding and gives you more reason to come back to it and keep playing when you’ve exhausted all of the current modes. Combat itself is exciting because there’s so much to take into consideration – position, whether or not there’s anything else lurking behind the clouds waiting to blow you up when you’re not paying attention, and of course, what the hell everyone else on your ship is doing. The graphics are easily forgiven most of the time unless you’re facing down a ship and you can’t tell whether it’s friendly or not. Flags would be a great introduction, it would easily distinguish one faint brown ship smear in the distance from another and clear up a lot of confusion.

What Guns of Icarus does well is pretty much everything else. All the skills and classes just seem to gel together harmoniously, and the character and ship design is charming enough to make you forgive a few graphical rough edges here and there, especially when you take into account the comprehensive leveling and customisations you can unlock if you get into it – more than enough incentive to keep playing once the steampunk gimmick has run its course. You might find it takes much longer to level up than in other multiplayer games, and if this is an active design choice to compel people to play, it seems like a fairly good idea – I certainly felt myself saying “Just one more game! Just one more game!” because I knew I was a stone’s throw away from unlocking some new goggles. It’s not like it makes the gameplay any better, but… goggles. Yeah, a lot of the rewards are cosmetic, but it’s fun, and that’s all that matters.

A major issue that struck me during the time I played the game was how empty it felt. It’s screaming for a single player mode, people would leap to the game in scores if they thought they could pilot their custom airship through a story in a sort of Skyrim-of-the-skies free roaming adventure. Understandably, that’s quite an epic undertaking for a small studio, and they are moving to remedy it with an Adventure mode later in development. Just know that what you’re getting on board with now, so to speak, are the foundations of a game that could potentially be something incredibly absorbing. At the moment it might feel a little barebones but it’s being expanded very regularly and definitely worth sinking your time and cash into. The developers are putting a hell of a lot of effort into building the game’s community, and it’s picking up a lot of Steam  – so if you’re going to enlist and take to the skies, it may as well be now!

Disclaimer:All scores given within our reviews are based on the artist’s personal opinion; this should in no way impede your decision to purchase the game.