Review - Tower of GunsBy Chris Murray
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Developers; Terrible Posture Games
Publisher; Grip Games Formats; Xbox One, (format reviewed), PS4, PS3 Release date: Out now |
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What do you get if you mix a rogue-like style of gameplay with a first person shooter? A decent mix of the two genres with stylistic graphics, reminiscent of the Borderlands series, that gives the player an almost infinite amount of game play.
Imagine playing a first person shooter, but not the ‘normal guns’ or ‘normal gameplay’ you'd expect to find in the likes of a Call of Duty game. Instead imagine you have the ability to add shotgun modifiers to rocket launchers, collect hundreds of stackable double-jumps and speed upgrades, and ascend a tower of procedurally generated rooms. Each of those rooms contains enemies which drop procedurally generated power ups as you destroy them and ultimately contain procedurally generated bosses, allowing you to unlock more guns and perks as you play. |
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In a nutshell, that is Tower of Guns. On the developer’s website, it states Tower of Guns is “for the twitch gamer” and “a short burst lunch break FPS”. Initially I can see what the developers mean by this but you would be pretty hard-pushed to make any decent progress within the hour or so they suggest in which you can beat the game. This game is not easy. The constantly changing rooms and enemies and sheer amount of them that can appear throughout each room is so overwhelming that, at times, is what makes this game very challenging. You never know what to expect. In saying that, though, the fact the levels and content are completely random makes every play-through feel like a new experience. At least for the first few hours of playing.
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Sometimes you can get lucky and find some decent upgrades in a short space of time. Other times you can find yourself in a room filled with so many enemies, its impossible to make any progress with the amount of firepower heading towards you. At one point I found myself in a room where as a result of there being so much happening on screen, I noticed some severe screen tear making it almost unplayable. The game then crashed and sent me back to the Xbox Home screen, loosing all my progress in the process.
To be fair this only happened the once, so perhaps it was my Xbox One. Countless play-throughs after this I found myself in rooms where there was a ridiculous amount of bullets and enemies and there were no problems.
To be fair this only happened the once, so perhaps it was my Xbox One. Countless play-throughs after this I found myself in rooms where there was a ridiculous amount of bullets and enemies and there were no problems.
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Each play through starts like this: Pick a gun; the first time you play you are given you a choice of two. A flimsy pea-shooter of a pistol, or a disk thrower of sorts. After this you choose a perk which is again a choice of two when you first start. Once this is done it is then time to ascend the tower, and literally shoot anything that moves. Seriously, if you are not shooting them you can bet your bottom dollar they will be shooting at you (apart from the hug robots, but you should still shoot them as they give you loot!). That is basically all there is to it. There is a loose story of an insane clown that lives at the top of the tower but it is not important really.
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The game throws various enemies of varying difficulty ranging from turrets both large (sometimes very large!) and small, spinning disks of death, explosive mines that follow you, floating tanks and more. Don't think the flimsy pea shooter of a gun is just a flimsy pea shooter of a gun though. At the start of the game it is, much like the disk thrower, but as you progress through the hordes of said enemies you can upgrade the firepower by collecting blue chips that drop after defeating them. Depending on the particular play-through, you can find items that boost the amount of blue chips you find. Making the weapons more powerful.
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You can even find weapon upgrades that boost the fire rate, damage, or change the projectile of the gun. When this happens it can make the game easier to some extent, especially if you find one that changes the rate of fire when using the disk thrower to an extreme level or changes the projectiles into explosive disk’s etc. As these appear randomly, it can be any number of upgrades. Scattered throughout each level are upgrades and perks that regenerate over time after using. These cost coins, however, so if you do not have enough at the time, then you will have to say goodbye to that crazy weapon power-up or handy double-jump.
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On one particular play-through, I found a perk that gave you coins each time you used it. By the end of the run I had plenty of coins but found very few of the perk stations to spend the coins… Damn it randomness!
New weapons are unlocked by completing various challenges. One in particular is to beat the section in the set time the game gives you before you start. Others consist of shooting a particular number of specific enemies and so on. This is where the risk/reward style of play comes in. Do you speed run the level in order to unlock a new weapon? Do you search each room thoroughly with the potential to find new perks for future play-throughs? Tower of Guns is a fine game. Unfortunately, after the first few hours of play, it starts to feel a little samey. Sure, it can be fun when you get a good run going. But sometimes this can be negated by the difficulty of some of the rooms. |
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Images courtesy of Terrible Posture Games.
Review copy of game provided by Publisher.
Review copy of game provided by Publisher.
