Tower of Guns review

[Administrator]

The gun remains the most heavily relied upon tool in video games, and perhaps it will always be this way. Guns excel and dominate on the interactive small screen. They allow us to interact with objects near (the lunging zombie) and far (the high wall-mounted switch) with an ease and speed only rivalled by the bow and arrow (which, alas, doesn't provide quite the same racket or variation as its modern descendant). Invention is rare. Perfect Dark presented us with a gun that could peer and reach through walls; Half-Life 2 a gun that could slurp up loose objects and, with a reversal of gravity, spit them out again as impromptu bullets; Portal a gun that could create shortcuts in the fabric of space and time. But these are outliers. Elsewhere, the evolution of the video game gun follows that of its real world counterpart, a dour and constant sprint to improve its rate, recoil and impact.
Tower of Guns, as you might expect from the name, makes the progression explicit. As you hurtle upwards through the tower, floor by floor, you must gobble up the blue chips that improve your chosen weapon as they confetti from downed foes. You may carry only one gun through the game, so evolution, rather than substitution is the only way to keep offensive power abreast of the tower's constantly strengthening enemies. A fully levelled weapon will obliterate the opposition, but as you take damage you gun's level takes a hit too. Find yourself struck by a barrage of missiles late in the game and you can be left with a sliver of health and nothing but a base-level peashooter for protection.
It's an ingenious design that sits comfortably within the broader context of this Quake-style Rogue-like, not least because it encourages caution when everything else in the game is urging you to press on through the phalanxes of cannons. Each of the tower's seven storeys has a 'par time', which, if beaten, will often net you a new weapon or perk. The higher floors of the tower are filled with an array of apocalyptically large turrets, flying tanks and floating bombs, and often the best way to progress is simply to race toward the door. But fail to find the exit and you may find yourself instead cornered instead. In Tower of Guns, a run can be over in seconds, sending you back to the beginning to try again.
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