Preview: Gun Glory: Anarchy Brings Originality To FPS
First or Third Person Shooters tend to be dominated by the same old games, with the Battlefield, Halo and Call of Duty (that dead horse that’s still being flogged) series’ normally being some of the first games that spring to mind when someone brings up the topic of shooters, although more could be said of the Halo franchise. The point being that most of the time, when it comes to First Person or Third Person shooters, there doesn’t seem to be much variety.
And most AAA developers seem to like it that way; Call of Duty and Battlefield are still selling, albeit not at the same levels that they used though, but the cash is still rolling in. Anytime it seems like there might be trouble, it’s just the case of a new setting and some extra DLC (the cost of which normally matches or surpasses the cost of the original game, obviously). And so, the First and Third Person Shooter genre continues its stale, dried up quest at making games seemingly just with the intention of making money, not making something creative that’ll still be creative years from now.
With that in mind, we look to Indie Developers, who seem to be the only bastion of creativity in the video game development world left, save for one or two of the bigger AAA studios. Enter Flange Studios and their upcoming game Gun Glory: Anarchy, a Free to Play Third Person Shooter that brings the Saints Row franchise to mind in terms of fun and looks. While Saints Row may have failed to match up to the Grand Theft Auto series, the release of Saints Row 2 saw the franchise find its own niche and become widely successful. Gun Glory Anarchy isn’t set to make the mistake of Saints Row and go up against the heavyweights of the First/Third Person Shooter genre, but it looks set to find its own niche and achieve a level of success that should bring Flange Studios’ name to the ears of many a First/Third Person shooter fan.
The story takes place in the near future of 2060 where huge explosion happened somewhere on planet Earth where a ton of unknown resources were located, causing a massive radiation poisoning in its surrounding areas. Eventually this radiation continued to spread and harm the Earth causing things to mutate and transform into horrendous bio monsters. Local and global governments collapse thus developing even more corruption such as Militia groups and gangs on the rise in the world. You, as the player is a Captain for a secret organization within the surviving governments called the Shadow where an elite mercenary group further investigates as to why the radiation started and hopefully put a stop to it. Out of all the destruction a new substance emerges called CORE. CORE is a special substance of unknown origins where you can fuse this with other weapons. So this is where part of the fun starts. You can get various CORE components and fuse them with other weapons or use pure CORE material to create your own weapons entirely from CORE. All while fighting evil.
While the story may not be the most fascinating or original that most fans will come across, it sure beats the typical “It’s World War Whatever…here’s a new gun!” of most Battlefield and Call of Duty games. As for game modes, Gun Glory: Anarchy has it’s own typical single player campaign however there’s a heavy intensive multiplayer features going to be implemented into the game as well. You got your basic PvE (Single player of course) and PvP. And apparently there’s a sort of strategy that will be implemented giving you more than just a run and gun so can’t wait to see that as well. Expedition mode is where you play against another player where both you and the player generally have the same amount of powers. And also there’s a Reward Mode where you can earn a ton of prizes. And last but not least there’s challenge mode. It’s the toughest one yet and you have to defeat enemies in certain criteria in order to complete it. Also there should be a zombie mode that will be featured as well – who doesn’t love some good zombie killing every now and again (they even cropped up in Saints Row…).
Now, onto something that most fans of First and Third Person shooters are thinking about; what are the weapons in Gun Glory: Anarchy like? The variety of weapons you’re able to retrieve in this game is amazing. Not only there’s a ton to choose from but the design on it look very unique and interesting, making each of the weapons stand out from each other, and stand out from the hundreds of weapons you’d see in every other First or Third Person Shooter. And for the IAP, it’s what you’d expect. But it doesn’t matter.
While most of the weapons can be earned by unlocking them at certain points of the game – or just picking them up when you get the chance – it does seem that some of the weapons, as well as possibly one or two other features, need to be paid for, which is something many players already disdain about Free to Play games. But, hey, it’s either pay a minimal fee to get something slightly better than what you already have, or be forced to see an ad every once in a while like you’d have to do in other Free to Play games. Fortunately, it seems that Gun Glory Anarchy may have veered away from the in-game ads, which means there won’t be anything to remove you from the game world every so often, although since release is still a while away, this may change.
For now, let’s just enjoy the fact that you can still play a damn good First Person Shooter, and get almost everything in the game for free. You’re not forced to pay for anything, but many of the weapons you might have to pay for are way too damn fun to bitch about how you had to pay a couple cent just to have it.