Monday, 7 December 2015

LO1 - Game Analysis - Guns Of Icarus




Guns of Icarus                       (PC)
Guns of Icarus is a Co-op based multiplayer game in which 2 teams control up to 4 different ships and must try to take down the enemy ships. Though it is essentially just a team deathmatch style of multiplayer, the need for players to work together and the constant maintenance of the ship offers a very different kind of experience from players would usually get.
There isn’t a set story or single player for the game, instead we are given bits of lore sprinkles throughout the game via loading menus and little pieces hidden throughout the maps and menus. “Guns of Icarus” instead encourages players to create their own stories in multiplayer, and the different tone that multiplayer has in this game allows for that perfectly. There aren’t really any characters in Guns of Icarus except for the players themselves, but they can be customised and changed in different ways as you progress to offer you the chance to make your character feel unique and individual. The other main characters of the game are the ships themselves, each one has an interesting a different design and can have certain parts of them changed to fit how a player would want to play the game.  The ships also have lots of tiny details put into them, something that players can notice in match as they walk across the ship’s hull and into its other areas.
Muse games originally started working on Guns of Icarus for a big publisher who offered to fund it, but after it became apparent to them that the published wanted them to change the game into something that they didn’t want it to be.  They became an independent company afterwards and continued work on the game without having to change it to fit another company’s needs. The game features realistic physics with projectiles being affected by gravity and wind movement, there are also very little glitches in the game, which allows players a stronger sense of emersion.
In the game you play as one of three different classes with gameplay varying for each one. If you play as the captain it’s your job to drive the ship and to tell the other players what to do, if you play as a gunner you mostly have to focus on shooting down the other ships but must also fix the engines when needed. The engineer is similar to the gunner, but instead must focus more effort of fixing the ship instead of using the guns. The realistic weapon physics, mean that player must plan each shot strategically before firing, making sure to take into account gravity and the movement of the other ships.
The Games heavy reliance on co-op as well as its steam exclusivity makes it into a game aimed at players who are more experience in games and know about them more. It’s also a social game so encourages people to play with their friends. The game doesn’t cost that much money due to how it was made, so this decreased price will attract a larger audience to it and means it will sell more copies even though it’s a lesser known developer and not connected to any triple a franchise.
The game is only available to players on PC via the steam workshop, but it doesn’t require a computer that is too good to play. The fact that the game is purely multiplayer lends itself better to PC gaming than console, the controls and need to be communicating with the other team is also something that works a lot better on PC.

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