Review: Tower of Guns (PS4)

Tower of Guns aims to try and mix a few popular ideas that show up in other indie titles, with the biggest one being procedurally generated levels, but a floaty control scheme and generally unintuitive gameplay makes this tower not worth the climb.

I’ll admit that I've never enjoyed bullet hell games to a rabid degree. A few titles like Ikaruga and Jamestown have stood out as games that are at least enjoyable to play, but the concept overall doesn't really appeal to me.

Transferring this idea to a first-person shooter (FPS) really doesn't make sense to me as the advantage from a shoot-'em-up perspective is that you are at least aware of all obstacles coming toward you, allowing you to plan your attack. Tower of Guns opts to take away 180 degrees of your view and naturally suffers for it. FPS’s in general tend to feel awkward to me on a console, and twitch shooting gameplay combined with an awkward control scheme really detracted from the experience overall.

If a game is going to throw dozens of enemies at you, I think it’s sensible to at least allow the option to make use of a "lock-on" function. The twitch gameplay that Tower of Guns requires would be much better suited to the mouse and keyboard control scheme, rather than relying on floaty aiming that is dependent on a control stick. The variety in power-ups helps to stave off boredom, and the weapons handle quite differently, but it’s not quite as satisfying using them to clear out room after room of robots and turrets that look a little different compared to others. The lone standouts were the various bosses, and the diminutive “hug-bots” at the beginning, but it’s a shame the rest of the enemies didn't also follow that creative line.

Overall, the pieces are in place for Tower of Guns to be something special. If were to review the PC version, my opinion may have been a little more positive at least, due to having a control scheme that’s friendlier to the sort of gameplay it encourages. I’d be lying if I wasn’t a fan of procedural generation. Titles like Spelunky and Binding of Isaac make subsequent playthroughs feel fresh due to what you could or couldn’t run into, and Tower of Guns does this as well. My issue is that it’s like giving you a car to drive but you don’t have the wheel.

- Scott Sullivan

The Good:
-  procedural generation keeps runs feeling unique, and creates replayability.
-  power-ups and bosses have a nice bit of variety to them.

The Bad:
- Bullet Hell Gameplay doesn’t lend well to a controller.
- Most cannon fodder fails to look as unique as the bosses
- Graphical style doesn’t really look like it is a part of this generation