Steerpike: When I wasn’t gunning I tried to help xtal keep the ship operating, and I felt like I banged a lot of things with a wrench and one bang might have been simpler.
Max: Absolutely agreed. There are enough other games that involve repetitive clicking. They can certainly make some minor adjustments which would go a long way.
Gregg: Something I really like is how customisable everything is. As a captain I could choose my airsh– sorry our airship, which guns to mount and where they should be mounted. Of particular note is how different each airship is, structurally as well as statistically. Some have asymmetrical layouts with more guns along one side or on the front or rear; some have multiple levels so engineers and gunners have their work cut out even more, climbing ladders and hurling themselves from deck to deck to access different guns and ship parts. It’s very cool. On the character/class level you can equip different gadgets depending on whether you’re a captain, engineer or gunner, which give you different abilities. So as captain I could equip front-impact bumpers and use some home-brew ‘moonshine’ to give our ship an engine damaging speed boost in a bid to crash directly into an enemy ship. Then there’s all the cosmetic stuff from the store. Max, as our engineer, you loved me using moonshine didn’t you?
Max: As long as I had fair warning, say…20 seconds before the moonshine was thrown on the fire, it was all good. And that’s precisely one of the reasons Guns of Icarus Online will be best enjoyed with friends: good communication and building a rapport with your captain is important.
Steerpike: Sort of on a different angle to the visuals – the visual cues and stuff do need work – I was very impressed by the visual style of the game as a whole. I dislike the word “Steampunk,” but that’s what best describes Guns of Icarus Online. Overall the game looked fabulous. More than that, the level of detail to the ships and the world showed a lot of care. We all noticed, for example, that Captain Gregg had a couple of tomato plants in pots up in the bridge. Touches like that can make a game for me. I felt our ship was very real – crates and stuff lashed down, Gregg’s tomato plants, creaking rope bridges, all kinds of small things that enhanced the feel of the whole. It felt like OUR ship, even though we’d only been on it for a short time.
Gregg: After conquering the skies we were going to go below deck and eat tomato soup like champions. But yeah, Guns of Icarus Online does look stunning, and the surrounding expanse of open air is one hell of a spectacle.
Steerpike: I can imagine a team with a great captain and a steely-eyed engineer, plus some good gunners, would absolutely dominate most matches.
Max: My eyes are sort of blue-greenish, but thank you.
Steerpike: They were steely during the game. Except when they were filled with terror because you’d fallen off the ship again. The Guild Wars 2 needed more railings.
Gregg: Sorry, as a moonshine-guzzling captain I had no fucks to give over health and safety.
Max: I suspect cases of personnel jettisons will drop significantly as latency is worked out. But we actually had a bit of fun toying with that idea, didn’t we? A few close flybys and I was anxious to abandon my engineering duties and put on my swashbuckler hat. Alas, I’m fine if the game sticks to doing one thing well!
Steerpike: We did discuss the idea of boarding other ships with grapnels and fighting hand to hand on deck. That would be awesome… though perhaps beyond the scope of this game. Still, the combat between ships and the need to master gunnery and navigation – without complex simulator controls – was a really fun experience for me. I took the helm for a while and suddenly understood how much Gregg was trying to deal with as Captain.
Gregg: I remember when Mat C and I were playing it at the Eurogamer Expo, he was telling me ‘move to the right a touch, no, too much, a bit to the left… bingo!’ and exactly the same happened this time with you on the guns Steerpike. There’s a very real sense of teamwork at play here and that’s a beautiful thing. You categorically cannot succeed on your own here, you’re part of a unit.
Steerpike: In terms of team co-op I haven’t seen anything quite like this yet. That is really, REALLY well done in Guns of Icarus Online.
Max: Did we ever end up ramming another ship successfully, or did we just flirt with that idea?
Gregg: No, we kind of scraped a few despite my best intentions.
Steerpike: A stronger physics model would be sweet too. Getting thrown to the deck when you ram another ship? How cool would that be?
Gregg: Very.
Max: You were flying the ship Gregg, was there any substantial feedback in that regard, or did it feel like another area that needed some polish?
Gregg: No, the feedback is great as captain, you can see the wheel turning, you can see your altitude on a little blue gauge, there’s this lovely mechanical lever which determines your speed. Not to mention, you can see and feel these things if you, y’know, look out from your ship.
Max: Was your view restricted– as if you were holding the wheel– or were you allowed to pan around, 360 degrees?
Gregg: Oh no, I was very much at the helm looking out across the deck below the balloon. It’s all first person. Steerpike, you mentioned the physics model. When you destroy a ship the whole thing shatters into a bajillion pieces — it looks great — but then it all kinds of… disappears mid-air. The same goes for when you fall off, you just sort of teleport back on deck. The payoff isn’t quite there with those things. I wanted to see them crash to the floor.
Max: Having a battlefield strewn with debris as ships go down would certainly add a kind of visual payoff, as you say, Gregg.
Steerpike: Flying in open airships has a sort of dreamy floatiness to it, and they captured that. But the visceral aspects of it were a little less robust. I’d love to see them capture the wind at high altitudes, the explosions of enemy ships, the cracking of wooden timbers when you take a shell. The game felt very real to me, but I kind of lust for the idea of it feeling even realer.
Gregg: That was the sort of feeling I had with the original Guns of Icarus, ‘I’d love to see this’, ‘I’d love to see that’. It’s such a seductive premise and really stokes your imagination. I think they’ve done a fantastic job of further realising their vision here and if v0.17 is anything to go by I think Muse Games have got a lot more in-store for the community. I’ve heard the new patch adds another ship, an extra turret and some new music so who knows where it’s all going to end up? I’m excited by it, and we didn’t even explore the other game modes either; we just stuck to team deathmatch.
Steerpike: Not knowing what to expect going in, I enjoyed myself immensely, despite our lag problems. The three of us, I felt, had a lot of fun playing. And that’s a selling point for this game. It’s fun. We had fun. At least, I had fun. A lot of it.
Max: Fun factor is something you really can’t overstate, and Guns of Icarus Online certainly hits the nail on the head.
Steerpike: To be able to completely overlook the crippling lag we had – which has been fixed now I must add – says something about the solidity of the game itself. The game was practically unplayable for a while, but we still played, and we had a good time.
Gregg: If you’ve got some friends lying around I highly recommend picking them up and getting them involved, I think you’ll all love it. Anything else from you chaps?
Steerpike: Not from me. I came away thinking, “I hope this game does well, it deserves it.”
Gregg: I’ll be picking up the four-pack and doling out a few copies if you’re interested?
Steerpike: Count me in. I WANT MY TOMATO SOUP!
As it happens, Steerpike bought the four-pack before me. For more information visit www.gunsoficarus.com or the Steam page here.
A few things to mention since we had this chat.
Guns of Icarus Online launched two days later just as hurricane Sandy hit the east coast and despite the devs losing power the game left the gate strong, to quote Max. When I logged in there was over 300 people playing and according to Steam over 3000 had played over the course of the day, which is brilliant. I also noticed that the game was alive with text chatter on the menu screen, with various people asking for newcomers to join them. Even better, when I joined a game there was global voice chat in the lobby and into the game itself. After playing Brink for over 120 hours in silence, it’s great to know there’s a lively voice chatting culture emerging. Lets hope it stays civil and fun. Muse Games have also added a field of view option which really enhances the sense of space and scale when you turn that up to around 70-80. Lastly, there was little to no lag, hurrah!
Hilarious piece guys, absolutely gutted I missed it. I’ve also spent the last 5 minutes cleaning my monitor having spat my drink out upon reaching the ships name. 😀
It really does look and sound brilliant, I want to play it 🙁
I am very excited to get in another round with the good ship Guild Wars 2. Especially now that I’ve fixed my PC (yes!) and won’t have to worry about random crashes. I logged in for about a half-hour session yesterday and the lag was entirely gone.
Not only that, but with my computer no longer in its death throes the game performed better graphically, so I was able to enjoy some fancier options, such as AA and increasing the field of view depth.
This comment is in no way meant to denigrate other indies, but for an indie Guns of Icarus Online looks quite beautiful and polished; polish being something that is often left out of indies (for good reason, of course). My point is simply that GoIO feels like a very loved and nurtured project, and I can’t wait to play some more.
(Thanks for the gift, Steerpike!)
Max and I played some more over the weekend, specifically some team king of the hill and team conquest and as I expected those game types were a lot more fun than straight forward team deathmatch. Because the matches last a while you naturally become invested in your team and crew’s success, there’s space to pull back victories from the brink which we managed a couple of times.
One of my favourite moments was during a king of the hill game where I took the helm after our ‘captain’ decided to jump on the guns mid-match. The capture point was above a massive wrecked hull that could be entered on one side. With a bit of luck I managed to reverse the ship (so we weren’t vulnerable from behind) into the hull with all our guns facing out across the desert waiting for the other team to try and take the point. It was brilliant. Max had time to get our ship back up to scratch, fixing and buffing stuff and the other gunners just sat waiting for the other team’s airships to drift into view.
Fantastic story! I’m really looking forward to playing this again.