Tower of Guns review

by Dr_Worm on Apr 7th, 2014

If you’re a first-person shooter fan, you might feel like you’ve probably seen it all. Then Tower of Guns for the PC comes around and freshens up the genre and shake things up a little. To begin the game, you choose a weapon and a perk. You don’t have many options to begin with, but more will be unlocked progressively. Then you’re thrown into the titular Tower of Guns, a tower filled with massive guns that want nothing more than to see you dead. Each time you play the game a different story is generated, but the stories are kind of pointless. In any case, you’re just a guy with a gun blasting his way through a tower of death.

More so than the game’s story, Tower of Guns’s levels are randomly selected so each playthrough is different. Each floor has a series of levels with a boss at the end of it. The level design is pretty hit and miss as far as I’m concerned. Most of the time levels seem interesting, but turn out to be really quite plain. Sometimes it’s as simple as getting across the room, other times a bit of athleticism is required to proceed. There are also translucent objects that let you float or shoot you in a certain direction. And, much like classic games of its ilk, the Tower of Guns is packed with secrets, often rewarding you with power-ups. These secrets are very well hidden, often to the point that you may not even care to find all of them.

No first person shooter would be complete without some opposition. All the enemies in the game are literally giant guns, shooting anything from bullets and cannonballs to fire and sawblades. Variety seems fine at first, but dreading certain enemies more than others can nullify that feeling. Bosses in this game are pretty nuts, often filling up giant rooms with their massive sizes. Of course, that doesn’t stop them from having big “shoot here” spots on them. One thing is always certain, there are so many things always trying to kill you that it gets very hectic very quick.

Tower of Guns controls quite nicely, and much like Quake or Unreal. You can bunny hop to get some speed and with the right power-ups, mid-air jump for more maneuverability. Dodging fire is paramount to success, and upgrades you find along the way add to your chances of survival. Killing enemies gets you XPs that upgrade your gun, as well as coins that you spend occasionally on even more upgrades. Said upgrades include additional jumps, more speed, jump height and more health, among others, while gun upgrades are more straightforward and mostly just increase firing speed and power.

Speaking of guns, you have about a dozen guns at your disposal, but you only have two to start with, and can only use one per run. It is possible to find guns along the way, but you can’t start a game with them. The guns have funny names like the Portable Pizza Thrower, Egon’s Pride and Peas-n-Carrots Pistol, but they can all be summarized as easily as sawblade launcher, gatling gun, and useless, respectively. Guns are always fun, but you can also choose a perk – a bonus that you receive right off the bat, such as triple jumping and immunity to environmental damage.

You continue going up floors and killing enemies until you either finish 5 levels, or you yourself are killed, at which point you have to start over. But that’s OK, because where Tower of Guns is truly fun is unlocking new things the more you play the game, giving you an incentive to keep playing and keep getting better. It doesn’t keep track of a high score, but like many arcade games, surpassing your farthest checkpoint is pretty satisfying. Getting that sensation in a first person shooter is pretty rare. In essence, you could say Tower of Guns is a rogue-like played as an FPS.

I do have some pretty big gripes with Tower of Guns, though. For starters, you can’t go to the settings in the middle of the game. Why? You can pause it, but if you want to change graphic settings, volume settings, or even sensitivity and controls, then you have to quit playing and return to the main menu. HUD elements don’t scale well at high resolutions, and sometimes enemy placements can seem really dumb and easy to avoid. But my biggest complaint with the game – how on Earth does this game not have co-op? It really seemed like a natural fit for the game, but alas, you’ll be stuck playing this game on your own. It’s also worth mentioning that this game was apparently designed by one guy, Joe Mirabello, and when you consider that, Tower of Guns is actually fairly impressive, but I still think some of these complaints could be easily rectified.

Not having co-op hurts a lot for me, but I still can’t say I don’t have fun playing Tower of Guns. There’s something about its relentlessness that keeps the game addicting, just getting that one step further each time you fail can be rewarding. I don’t think it’ll appeal to everyone, but for those who want something refreshing to play in the morning before work or school might appreciate Tower of Guns’ pick-up-and-play nature. And even though the shooting itself lacks depth, the rogue-like and upgrade elements really won me over.

4 out of 5

Categories: Reviews