Game Review: Guns of Icarus Online

Hello everybody!
As many of you remember, I already did a review of Guns of Icarus Online about three to four months ago. In fact, I believe that I was the first reviewer that actually reviewed it. I'm not sure though.

 A bit about the game and developers.
Guns of Icarus Online is being developed and published by Muse Games. Muse games are tiny indie company, filled with only great fellows. I am in contact with few of them (even the founder of Muse Games!) and they are all great guys! If we weren't a whole continent away, I'd even go on the party that they made couple of weeks ago. Guns of Icarus Online is a very new game. It got released about a month or two ago, and it was in beta for quite a long time. It's a post-apocalyptic game in which you take control of a zeppelin and try to destroy the enemy. That is so for now, but in the near by future there should be more of a MMORPG-style game mode.

About Gameplay. 

Guns of Icarus Online has rather unique gameplay from the other games. There is just one more game with a similar gameplay as GoIo. In GoIo you are divided in few crews with four men on each zeppelin. Your mission is clear and simple.  You and your friendly zeppelins need to kill the enemy couple of times before they kill you. It's usually 2 vs 2 game. It sounds easy, but it is actually not. In each crew there should be a pilot, at least one gunner and at least one engineer. The fourth guy can be what ever the rest of the crew wants him to be. TLS members usually go three engineers and a pilot, but we think about changing that strategy into one pilot, one gunner and two engineers, since now gunners give more boosts than what they used to in beta.

Each class has its own strengths and weaknesses. That doesn't mean that one class is worse then the other, it just means that Pilot, for example, can use more pilot-oriented skills (if i am not mistaken, three) while he can use only one gunner and one engineer skill. While on the other hand, gunner can use three to four gunner skills, while he can use only one pilot skill and only one engineer skill. It works the same with the engineer class. Recently Muse Games made a very nice patch. A pilot of the ship does not need to be the captain of it. Syphio has always been a better pilot than me, but I'm actually the commander of our crew so this patch was awesome for us.

In GoIo there are various types of ships and weapons. I will talk about weapons first.
There's a decent amount of guns in GoIo and that number keeps increasing every few months, or when ever developers feel like it. All guns are different in this games. Some guns work great the further you are (such as, for example, sniper) but they are practically useless on close. And also, the further you shoot the target at, the bigger the chance of him moving away is. Then there are also some close-combat guns such as shotguns which are the strongest guns in the game if you come very close, but from far they are useless. You need to build a good strategy. TLS and N7 (our second team) keep changing the strategies non-stop. The latest one we came across was that N7 would drive a tower (great defense, bad offense zeppelin) and they would mainly use sniper rifles, while TLS would have some tanky ship such as pyramitdion or something and would mainly go into close combat, taking enemies down with their shotgun.

Since GoIo is so team-play oriented game, it also requires you to chose a good combination of ships. There are not too many ships in GoIo but Muse Games work their asses off to make new ships. Great combination, in my opinion, is very fast ship such as squid to fly around the map, shooting the enemy with snipers, and a very tanky zeppelin such as Tower or Pyramidion that would rush in between (Well not really because nobody can survive that) the enemy and shoot them with shotguns. Thinking of which ship to use in combination with the other one seems rather easy, but you have to think hard about each ships durability, speed, gun slots and so on and on. It is, in fact, very tricky to guess a good combination. It's totally the same with guns.

The new future in this game that got released upon the game release, is the shop. In Shop everyone can buy new equipment for their character to look slightly different than the others. It is not expensive, but in my opinion they should remove that shop and make all the items free, or they could make some kind of in-game currency that you get by winning battles or doing achievements.Which brings me to the next subject, achievements. This game has level system and achievements, but neither of them are important in this game. Nobody can (for now) see the achievements that you've earned. Both achievements and level system were mainly added just for personal satisfaction. Some achievements, on the other hand, do give you some fancy rewards such as new equipment and stuff. Since i don't care about the look of my character nor the achievements, i haven't unlocked even one yet :P

Graphic and Audio
Graphic of Guns of Icarus online has stunned me. Unity is new software and very good, but when it first came out I thought that it will only be good for browser games. Muse Games have proven me wrong. Muse Games have really put a lot of effort into their game's look, and honestly, I love it. They still can't be compared to big, strong companies such as Valve or Ubisoft or what ever, but Muse Games have really done an awesome 3D work. Something that not too many indie developers can do.
Songs of this game are very good, but they do tend to get kind of annoying and loud at times, and thus, after about a month of my play time i had to turn the volumes off. Only the song volume though.

Story -- EPIC SPOILERS! YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED! --
Not much of a spoiler since Guns of Icarus online doesn't even have a story. In fact, it has something better! Player imagination! Since you chose your own crew, you can also chose if you want to be a "role-playing" crew or just casual gaming crew. As a role player, you can build your own past of the crew members, how the ship that you fly was made and what ever you want, which makes this game's story very fun. Casual players on the other hand don't really care about this game's story and they just care about shooting each other down from the sky. In either way, it's very fun to play this game!

Pros, cons and final grade.
Pros:
- Cheap and amazing.
- Very teamwork oriented.
- Customization will be added in the future.
- Very nice graphic for an inde-game.
- Regular updates and patches that add new stuff to the game.
- Various weapons, maps and ships.

Cons:
- Shop system. Everything in it is cheap, but I still see it kind of useless.
- Not too many players play this game.

Final grade: 9/10

Extra Info: Guns of Icarus Online is very amazing game. If there was no GoIo, TLS would never meet N7. And for that, I am very grateful to Muse Games. You guys did a great job and I honestly hope that you will keep doing a great job! TLS, N7 and I will keep on supporting you in any way we can!

That is it for now!
Have fun everybody!

Wolfie

P.S. I do not have any new pictures yet. I will add new pictures as soon as my teams are ready! That will be today probably! I'm sorry about making this look rather blank.
P.S 2 As you can see I added two pictures. I will keep taking pictures, deciding which ones look the best and i will keep updating this post with new pictures

AND the giveaway of Guns of Icarus Online is now online! It was brought to you by our dear Bubbles, the founder of Muse Games! Thank you a lot sir Bubbles!

http://www.steamgifts.com/giveaway/zRQK1/

Do you want to join the giveaway? Sure! All you need to do to be able to join the group is click "subscribe" button, or just comment a lot before the giveaway ends.
Good luck!