TOWER OF GUNS
Created by: Joe Mirabello/Terrible Posture Games
On paper, Tower of Guns should be a right laugh for those looking to harbour back to a good old time, where killstreaks were just fairy tales and sprint buttons were only available in arcade games like Track and Field and so on. You have a tower (obviously) and an ever increasing difficulty level where the baddies just get more and more in number and things just get pretty manic, in all honesty. The problem is though, it doesn’t really work as well as you’d like it to.
When you DO sit back and look at this game, you kind of hope for something in a similar form to Serious Sam. The enemies in that at least were varied and original. The bad guys in this are some of the most boring I’ve ever come across. They all look the same for a kick off and they all fire in such a similar way that it sadly gets tedious within 5 minutes of starting, bearing in mind that you’ve already realised that there is no real story to speak of and any attempts to be humourous kind of falls on deaf ears due to the boredom ranking up all too quickly.
I feel bad being so harsh with a title that tries to be good and has it’s heart in the right place, but then I remember my first play on it. I wanted to switch it off after just one shot. The guns have a Borderlands or Ratchet and Clank feeling to them with their quirkiness, but that is where the cool stuff ends. The game rotates around you heading up a tower level by level, with each of them being randomly generated at least, to reach the summit and much kudos between you and the other 480 people who, at the time of reviewing this, were playing Tower of Arms.
As I’ve said though, even with the attempts to raise the humour and trying to keep things interesting in other ways, this piece of software is just so tedious. Unlike most other shooters now you only get the one gun to use throughout the playthrough, as well as one helpful perk which can be used at any time with a push of the X button. These can be picked up on the battleground and changed by running over them, but the replayability has to be done to end up with some of the more elitist abilities.
Sadly though replaying this game is not something done easily. The rather lame and very bland enemy system has already been mentioned, which is ok the first 5 times and really dull for the rest. The boss waves can be easily dealt with by moving in a loop round the enemy, not taking a huge amount of damage and then picking up a MAX Health anyway to carry on. It all results in a game which is old before it’s (first) time. It never really gets a head of steam and also, if any game was SCREAMING out for a multiplayer then this would have been it and I think it would have made a huge amount of difference.
The music is another dull contribution to proceedings. It never really sits up and grabs you and almost tries REALLY hard to blend in, instead of feeling at home from the off. The collection of pieces as they are now would have you thinking that there was something cool waiting for the player to begin.
As is stands though it is just a dull, lifeless title, even with leaderboards and such you just don’t feel like you want to even try and improve on things. The fact that it is also a kick off of £15 from the Xbox Store is rather insulting as well. For the price of 2 pints of beer you could add that onto the initial price and get EA Access with Battlefield 4, which is an already accomplished and safe shooter to get stuck into. What this emphasises is the fact that for a few extra pounds you can get yourself a much better shooting game for a lot less coins and feel a lot better about playing it, or adding something to get a game you feel more comfortable in. CoD: Ghosts, Advanced Warfare, Battlefield 4 and heck, even Hardline have been coming in for some preowned game shop trade ins to sell on at a cheaper price.
There isn’t really a great deal else you can say about Tower of Guns to be perfectly honest. I wish it did play like the old first person shooters and offer me as much fun as they did. I wish for a really cool enemy range, like the smiley faced homing mines from Unreal Tournament. I just wish that they wouldn’t release things like this in a slightly broken state. I genuinely wish I was putting something else into the hard drive than this, and when you consider what you can get for close to that money in terms of shooting these days (Wolfenstein, Far Cry 4) then you begin to start saying goodbye to the old boy before he’s even sat down.
If it were half the price and double the fun then I would be less critical towards this and it would be sitting here with a respectable scoreline and an option for you to ponder. The way it is though I would only advise that you stay away, download it on PS4, if you’re lucky to have one, for free on Playstation Plus and choose a different option on here than this game,as Tower of Guns is just no fun at all and does not manage to hit the right areas for what it’s worth. It should be left alone until there are some major improvements and a cheaper price tag. Heck, even Call of Duty: Ghosts is about the same price now and I actually think that option would be an improvement.
Avoid if you can.
SUMMARY: Doesn’t hit the mark and should be left alone, locked in the tower until someone wants to go through repetition to the infinite degree.