Guns of Icarus Online PC Review

Gameplay is one of the most important aspects of any game, if not the most important! but the best thing Guns of Icarus has to offer is its unique take on the multi-player death match scenario but not only offering you a new way of going about it, but also a refreshing change of pace. A general game of death-match will consist of up to 8 ships in a 4 v 4 format, each with 4 players per ship. Every ship needs at least 1 captain, it’s the captains responsibility to fly the ship, spot enemies and give orders to the remaining crew, which can consist of any combination of Engineers or Gunners.

As the captain you take the wheel of a rather sizeable steam-punk style airship, one instead of the usual flying mechanics you find in a lot of death match games, things are of a much more laid back pace here, you quite literally take the wheel, rotating it left or right with the A and D keys, waiting for your ship to respond, or you can slowly travel up and down using W and S. Speed can be adjusted with R and F allowing you to move forwards and backwards at varying rates. It doesn’t sound much, its a simple enough setup that anyone can pick up, but it takes a great captain to really put them to good use, leading to one of the most stunningly tactical aerial battle mechanics I’ve ever seen in a game.

While there are options to boost your speed further, it comes at a cost of burning out your engines, so you best have a good team of engineers to put out fires and get your engines working again, same goes for your balloon, if you use the sudden stop option to many times, you’ll find your self falling out of the sky, meaning having a headset and a good crew can be the difference between victory and rapidly kissing the ground.

As the captain you also have your scope, making it your responsibility to scope our enemy ships, which marks them for your gunners allowing them more accurate shots on the vital components of the enemy ships, as well as making sure your ship is in the best defensive position to attack from while keeping the best guns for the job pointing in the right direction, with guns on the ship having a limited turning radius if your facing the wrong way, your gunners are effectively blind.

With plenty of modes to choose from such as such as Skirmish, capture the flag and king of the hill, the sort of game types you would expect in any team based shooter really, just of course all with a heavy focus on true team work.