Guns of Icarus Online (2012)

I played Guns of Icarus Online a while with some friends, but I did not like it. Not specifically because of its difficulty or because I was not good at it or something, no, this time it was the overall atmosphere and setting of the game.

In Guns of Icarus Online, you play in teams of four, friends or random people and control one of the many available airships. Each ship has its strengths and weaknesses, like slower speed, more armor, better turnability etc. Each player can take a role at the start of the match, like the gunner, captain or mechanic. The goal is simple. Shoot down other players airships while keeping yours in the air. The mechanic can fix damage to your own ship, the captain steers the ship in the right direction and the gunner defends the ship and shoots down others.

Graphicly, this game looks fine enough. There is enough detail in the ships and the parts that can fall off or can be damaged. But aside from the ships, the environment is just so empty. The fact that you are in the air, and air is a whole lot of nothingness, does not help, but still I would have appreciated some more stuff to look at. Big birds that harass you, floating debris, that kind of stuff.

Sound wise, this game is nothing special. You got some ambient music, the sound of your ship and the pea shooter sound of your mounted gun.

The gameplay is simple and repetitive, and that is normally not a bad thing. Games like Counter Strike are also very repetitive. Just shoot people and respawn. However, what killed the fun for me with Guns of Icarus Online, was the empty map in a match with sometimes nothing to do or see. The perfect comparison is Atlas. In this game, you waste away on the endless ocean, seeing water and nothingness for hours while traveling to something of interest. In Guns of Icarus, it is exactly the same, although this time, it is ten miles into the air.

I surely had some fun while playing with friends. The tension in some matches could be high and sometimes, me as a mechanic, saved all our asses with little than a second to spare when fixing a crucially damaged part of the ship. Also, it feels very satisfying to see your enemy go down and make them crash into the ground. But when playing with random people, or after playing ten or more matches, you basically seen it all and it does not offer anything more.

Most of this review is from personal taste and experience however so online experience may vary from person to person, but for me, I just got bored and did not want to play the game any longer.

In conclusion, Guns of Icarus Online is not a bad game, it just lacks some content and replay value. I would personally not recommend it, but this is, again, from personal taste.

Guns of Icarus Alliance is just Guns of Icarus Online with PVE and some other stuff added. Like GOI Online it is dead. And honestly, there's a reason for that. It just isn't very engaging.

You are stuck on a ship usually captained by someone else. You slowly glide around through areas with a lot of smoke. Sometimes you can shoot at the enemy, but the titular guns have a tiny cone of fire so most of the time you can't actually use them. At best you can fix some stuff, which isn't very engaging. And that's coming from someone who used to main Engineer in TF2 and Battlefield 3/4. You don't even have some sort of rifle you can fire or anything.

This game is so slow and boring i wouldn't recommend it if it was free.