A PS4 review copy of Guns of Icarus Alliance was provided by Muse Games for the purpose of this review.
Guns of Icarus is a first-person air-based combat game including PVP and with the latest release, PVE is now included. You control the various crew members all with specific abilities and skills of benefit to the team. You will fight your way through some very interesting landscapes to become the finest ship in the skies.
Getting started:
Upon launching the game was greeted by a bold and imposing soundtrack bolstering your thoughts of the experience to come. I was thrown straight into single player training which showed me how difficult running my own airship would be. But it lacked the teaching of any sort of preparation for the big bad multiplayer world. The training starts you off with the most difficult class in the game. So you really know it all by the second training mission and the rest is just boring. By the time I was released into the world, I spent 80% of my playtime dead. The training neglected to mention that there was more than one type of ship, some more powerful than others.
Breaking in your airship:
After getting to grips with the game, I acquired a new ship and some perks. Then I was ready to rise through the ranks. I started a game of coop with some randoms and that’s when the games true beauty shone through. As a single player game, this would’ve driven me to madness. Once I got talking to an actual human team in a nice easy coop mission it was fun and exciting gameplay, we continued playing through all the missions and grew in skill as a team. The team liked my new ship and made me feel special for having it, you better believe I upgraded with the nicest equipment after that.
Picking the class for you:
Guns of Icarus features 3 unique classes, Pilot, Engineer, and Gunner. Each of these is fairly self-explanatory but deciding which ones for you is rather tough. Me personally, after seeing the amount of responsibility allocated to both the pilots and engineers I decided being a lemming style gunner was the job for me. Each class has special abilities geared towards making their roles easier such as the pilot being able to speed the ship up, the engineers can sprint around the ship to keep on top of all the equipment, and the gunners can reload the mounted guns faster than the others which were a lot more my play style. You can take other items in your class loadouts to help yourself and the team with various effects like quicker cooldowns, speedboosts, and different ammo types.
Taking to the skies:
By the time you hit the 20-hour mark in this game you’re going to have had some highs, an awful lot of lows and a certain level of resentment for every squad you play with for lacking the abilities you want. The easy battles become too easy, the hard battles are a struggle but completely do-able. You feel like a veteran to the clearly new players, teaching them your own personal tips and tricks. Leaving the coop scene and heading into PVP is as hard as the game is going to get as with any multiplayer game, to me you’ll always be playing against someone better than you especially in this game.
Conclusion:
Guns of Icarus is a fun and inventive game, But the true fun of the game comes with playing alongside friends. To fully implement yourself as part of a crew you need to know who you’re playing alongside and you need to be comfortable communicating to be successful. If you enjoy a bit of a challenge, Well thought out landscapes with beautiful vistas creeping up around every corner, there are lots of moving pieces and every movement leads to action if this appeals to you this will be your sort of game.
Guns of Icarus Alliance
Pros
- Pretty landscapes to fly around
- Interesting and fun premise
- Powerful soundtrack
- Cross platform servers
Cons
- Very elaborate and borderline infuriating combat system
- Learning curve between PVE and PVP is non existent
- Low player count at peak times
