Gunscape Review

Gunscape is a first person shooter, which was created by indie games developer Blowfish Studios, who also made Siegecraft. The game is light, infused with humour, but difficult to grasp at first.

When I say the game is light, I mean two things. One, the game is easy to put on and play, as there is no story line to pay attention to (or skip, depending on the kind of player you are). Two, your avatar is actually very, very light. I had it on the lowest sensitivity and I was still one with the wind, breezing around the map. You have next to no weight to yourself, although you do lightly bounce around when you move, giving the feeling that you actually have feet. I played it on the highest sensitivity, just to see what it was like… never again. I am sure I am recovering from whiplash.

This game feels like a mashup between Minecraft and Avatar Paintball, which makes for some light-hearted gameplay. I can imagine that groups of friends will enjoy this game, similar to that of Rocket League. Finding hardcore players are few and far between for this sort of game, you will just find people wanting to have a good time and that shows by the way Gunscape tries to sell itself. The dialogue boxes that pop up are humorous, and when the map it loading the dialogue says ‘Get psyched’. The avatars all show off their assets by thrusting as you scroll through the options, which there are a lot of.

This game knows that it has taken inspiration from various other games to create this one, especially with the block-placement interface. If you play a lot of Minecraft and enjoy building in it, you will probably enjoy building in Gunscape too. I tried my hand at it and thought it was simple; when you click on the build a map option, it tells you the controls and then you have free reign. However, this could pose a problem is you are a complete novice at map building, because there is no tutorial on how to build, you may struggle to get to grips with it. But you are given a lot of freedom to create whatever map your heart desires, and if you are a trophy hunter, you get trophies for doing so too.

The graphics leave a lot to be desired, but when the game takes a lot of map inspiration from Minecraft, they end up having a very similar look. But, hey, you get to play on loads of different maps, with solo, PVP and Co-Op options, so the graphics are at the back of your mind when you are playing this with your pals. There is also a lot of different types of guns in this game, some more exclusive on the map than others. During my play, I was holding shotguns, lasers, pistols and rocket launchers. They just sit on the map, yours for the taking, you just have to find them and walk over them to swap. You do not get the option however; if you walk over a gun, you are forced to pick it up. There was a map where I had rocket launcher and was having a whale of a time, but walked over a pistol and the feeling of downgrading was enough to make me sad, thinking about the loss I had just experienced.

When it comes down to it, the game is enjoyable, if you have a lot of pals willing to buy it too. Playing by yourself is not nearly as enjoyable in a game such as this. There is a lot of room for improvement, but if you do like light humour and light gameplay, this game could be the game for you.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Sony Playstation 4 code was provided to Bonus Stage for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to press@4gn.co.uk.