Gunscape Steam Review

If you have a good memory then you might remember a post I wrote all the way back in July 2015. Ok, if you have a really good memory you may remember that post. Anyway, it was a post about Gunscape, a first person shooter, in which people can collaborate to create levels, and then blow each other to smithereens once they’ve done. Well, Gunscape was released on the 2^nd March, I got my hands on a copy, had a play around, and now it’s time for me to do my thing.

So, how is it? Well, to put it simply, Gunscape is like the offspring of Doom and Minecraft, and therefore we’ll look at these two parts separately.

The Doom bit, i.e. the First person shooter (fps) is fairly standard, as things go. It follows the basic idea of running around a maze-like level, picking up weapons, ammo, health packs and then doing your best to kill any other player in the same map with you. There’s nothing like learning to share, eh? To be honest this game is not going to be sold on the merits of the FPS alone, there are better games out there if that’s the only thing you’re looking for.

So, let’s look at the Minecraft bit then, the level creator. You start with an empty void, with nothing except a few start points on a small piece of red or blue carpet, the rest is for you to build. Select the block you want to add from your catalogue (of which there are  a fair few from carpet to stone, and there’s plenty of wall textures) then just click on the side of the existing block you want to add a block to, then just keep clicking and building everything up. You can add health packs, ammo and weapons (as well as teleporters, bounce blocks and aesthetic improvements) as you go from the same menu. It’s all rather easy, if not a little daunting, when you see nothing but a void in front of you and you have to try to figure out what you’re doing to do.

Luckily though, you don’t have to be in this alone. You can open up your in-progress level to other people who can join and then add their own bits to it. It’s a great way to watch your level grow organically. It may not necessarily grow in the direction you want it to go, but the joining of different styles and ideas can be interesting. Plus, you can always titivate it up later before finalising the project.

Again this level creator is not the greatest in the world, it is just Minecraft in reverse and if you were selling this game wholly on its level creator there may be games out there with better ones.

So far I’ve been looking at the different sections of Gunscape separately. However, it’s completely unfair to measure this game based on its individual parts, as the fun part of Gunscape is using all the bits together. As I kinda mentioned in the pretext above, the fun with Gunscape is creating a level together, maybe with complete strangers. Seeing how it develops, and then playing the level, maybe with the same group of people you created it with.

To me, it adds a little more than just your standard blowing seven shades of… errrr grey out of your friends.

Gunscape is available from Steam.

Final Verdict – 60/100

“Gunscape is a great mix of FPS and Social Creator game types, but unless you’re a die-hard fan of these genres Gunscape might not be worth its price tag of £14.99.”