Guns of Icarus Online Review

Competitive multiplayer games rarely focuses on teamwork. Don't get me wrong, you need teamwork to win, but most of the time being a better shot beats working together as a team. of course there are several exceptions to this as you can see in games like World of Tanks and Mechwarrior Online where you need to work together to win. Guns of Icarus IMO takes this to another level, does this makes Guns of Icarus a great game?
First I have to say that this game looks pretty good and shows what the Unity engine can really do. People think that the Unity engine is only fit for mobile or browser games but this game proves otherwise. The environment looks good, the ship details are also quite beautiful. Character model is a bit meh but overall I can say that the game is pretty good looking.

The gameplay for Guns of Icarus Online focuses on teamwork as players will take on the role of an airship crew. The Pilot navigate the ship while Gunners moves back and forth between various turrets to take down the opposing ships and Engineers move around the ship to repair any damage sustained in combat. To win against the enemy team who are also doing the same thing each team must work together and do their best in handling their ships.

This focus on teamwork and making each player a crew of a ship instead of controlling a whole ship is what makes this game interesting to me. Think of how a tank crew, each with their own responsibility, working together to beat the opposition. Instead of tanks, you are put into the position of a steampunk airship crew but it is the same nonetheless. The fact that there is an in-game voice chat function also adds a lot to this game.

Each player can customize how their character looks and what kind of equipment they bring. These equipments will help out in the fight such as mallet and spanners to repair ship parts or various kinds of ammunition to shoot at the enemy ships.

Balance between ships is pretty good with bigger and tougher ships being slow enough that the smaller faster ships can have a chance to have a fair fight. Bigger ship is also harder to maintain as the parts are located further away and engineers will have a harder time running around repairing. The fact that bigger ships doesn't have more crew slot also adds to the list of disadvantages.

Overall, I liked Guns of Icarus online. It offers a teamwork-focused gameplay with an interesting concept. Decent graphical quality and quite a lot of customization regarding how your character looks, what your character brings to a fight(tools, ammo), ship choice and ship weaponry all adds to the overall gameplay. Do note that you need to be able to work in a team for this game to be good. If you dislike the idea of working together with others then this might not be the game for you.

Note: for those who wants a PvE mode, rejoice! as the devs are doing a Kickstarter campaign to create an Adventure Mode for the game. This will also add alot more content to the game where you can choose factions, and explore the world of Guns of Icarus. You can do missions to help out towns and cities in the world. Go check it out and maybe back them out if you like what you see.

Kickstarter page: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/musegames/guns-of-icarus-onlineadventure-mode
Steam Page: http://store.steampowered.com/app/209080/
Get it for just $1 over here(limited offer, ends on April 23, 2013): https://indiegamestand.com/