Boring, empty and slow MMO game in my opinion.

I played Guns of Icarus Online a while with some friends, but I did not like it. Not specifically because of its difficulty or because I was not good at it or something, no, this time it was the overall atmosphere and setting of the game.

In Guns of Icarus Online, you play in teams of four, friends or random people and control one of the many available airships. Each ship has its strengths and weaknesses, like slower speed, more armor, better turnability etc. Each player can take a role at the start of the match, like the gunner, captain or mechanic. The goal is simple. Shoot down other players airships while keeping yours in the air. The mechanic can fix damage to your own ship, the captain steers the ship in the right direction and the gunner defends the ship and shoots down others.

Graphicly, this game looks fine enough. There is enough detail in the ships and the parts that can fall off or can be damaged. But aside from the ships, the environment is just so empty. The fact that you are in the air, and air is a whole lot of nothingness, does not help, but still I would have appreciated some more stuff to look at. Big birds that harass you, floating debris, that kind of stuff.

Sound wise, this game is nothing special. You got some ambient music, the sound of your ship and the pea shooter sound of your mounted gun.

The gameplay is simple and repetitive, and that is normally not a bad thing. Games like Counter Strike are also very repetitive. Just shoot people and respawn. However, what killed the fun for me with Guns of Icarus Online, was the empty map in a match with sometimes nothing to do or see. The perfect comparison is Atlas. In this game, you waste away on the endless ocean, seeing water and nothingness for hours while traveling to something of interest. In Guns of Icarus, it is exactly the same, although this time, it is ten miles into the air.

I surely had some fun while playing with friends. The tension in some matches could be high and sometimes, me as a mechanic, saved all our asses with little than a second to spare when fixing a crucially damaged part of the ship. Also, it feels very satisfying to see your enemy go down and make them crash into the ground. But when playing with random people, or after playing ten or more matches, you basically seen it all and it does not offer anything more.

Most of this review is from personal taste and experience however so online experience may vary from person to person, but for me, I just got bored and did not want to play the game any longer.

In conclusion, Guns of Icarus Online is not a bad game, it just lacks some content and replay value. I would personally not recommend it, but this is, again, from personal taste.

It became hard to find matches after a while, which is a shame, it was such a fun coop experience. The game would prompt real conversations about the best tool or weapon or ability for the upcoming match, because each choice really would make a meaningful difference in how that crew member played. I get the sense that other games have come along since and done more with the competitive coop ship concept, but the airship theme, the foggy arenas, and the 3D movement created really tense periods of searching and prep followed by stressful, fast paced, but ultimately manageable battles.
In terms of negatives, while the combat feels great and you can really feel success and failure, the maintenance tasks could feel a bit... floaty, which is a lot of what you're doing minute to minute. I feel there could have been better workshop integration but that isn't easy for multiplayer games. Its true that when its playerbase shrank the game definitely suffered. But if you can get 6 or 8 friends interested the game is all there, you can still get a great couple of matches out it.