GunBound

"Gunbound - One of the best free games available"

Gunbound is just one of those games that is free, that people would still pay money to play it if it costed money. The game is somewhat like the well-known Worms game. You are a tank, or as referred to in this game as a mobile, and you shoot one of your three weapons at the enemies on the map. You can pick one of 14 mobiles, and and all of them have their own shots. There are also 2 secret mobiles you can get if you choose random, which randomly chooses a mobile for you. The game is based off of a delay scale, someone of that you would see in an RPG. Your first shot always has lower delay, ranging from 750-820 delay, not counting how long it takes you to shoot your weapon. Your second shot is normally more powerful, and has anywhere between 850-960 delay, depending on the mobile.

Some mobiles are really good short range and some are really good long range, or even both. This creates the ability to fit your playing style. The game is somewhat new player friendly, as it has 12 servers, 4 of which only allow people with a low ranking to play. The problem with it is that there are really good players that make new accounts and just keep making history of new players on the low rank servers. The game is highly addicting as it has you always working for something. There are 2 different types of points you earn in this game, Gold and GP. Gold is basically what you think it is, the money of the game. With gold, you can purchase "avatars", which are just clothing articles you use to boost your characters stats, and make your character look better. There are really cheap avatars which don't do much stat boosting, then there are some avatars that when you first look at them, you can't believe how much they cost.

GP is pretty much the way of earning experience and enhancing your rank. Next to your characters name is a little icon that classifies you, showing how much GP you have and how good you possibly are. You start out as just a little chicken icon, but you soon get a wooden hammer. As you go on you will find yourself having cool looking axes, and soon having even double sided axes, or battle axes. The professionals of the game have a snazzy looking wand next to their name, or maybe even a dragon if they are some of the top 21 players in the world. GP and Gold provide a easy earning and safe way of giving yourself something to look forward to, and something to work toward.

Before you actually get into the game, there are a few steps you must take. First, you must pick a server, which there are quite a numerous amount of. Then you go to a chatting window with 6 servers that you can join. You can go through a selection of usually about 800 games playing, and you just click join and you enter a waiting screen. In this waiting screen, there are 8 slots for characters. In the middle, the person with the key, whom is the admin, is able to pick the map to play on. On the bottom left you are able to choose your mobile. On the bottom right you are able to fill up 6 slots of items. Items are 1 use powerups that you can click on when it is your turn in battle, and they do a little added something besides the average 1 shot turn. You can pick duals, teleports, lightning, health kits, and much more. Most of these take up 2 slots of your 6 max, so you will normally find yourself equipping only 3 items. Items add a very unique touch to the game, and can turn the tide of battle.

The battles themselves are very addictive. When playing, you use your arrow keys to either move your mobile, or change it's angle. Some mobiles have really wide angles, and some very narrow. That is another thing to take into consideration when picking a mobile. When you want to shoot, you hold your space bar and watch on the bottom of the screen, as a bar fills up. If you hold your spacebar for only a short while, you will shoot almost right in front of you. If you hold it long enough to fill up the bar, you will probably shoot your shot off the map. It takes quite some time to get used to just how far your shot will go when you fill up a certain amount of the bar. This makes the game require experience, which has you keep playing games to further your experience and play better and the important part, winning. One thing to take note of is the fact that it is only multiplayer. You need internet to play and you can only play with other people, which leads me to my only complaint. I wish this game had a tutorial or at least a single player practice option. You are stuck only playing with other people and learning from trial and error, so you will probably look really bad in front of more experienced players when you start.

All in all, this game is amazing. It is absolutely free, and isn't a computer hog, so even if you have a fairly outdated computer, you can still play. It will have you playing up until sunrise, and trying to earn that long sought after rank you really want, or that avatar that you want to equip to enhance your attack. Even if you are just a casual gamer, or even someone who only goes on the computer to check your hotmail, this is a game you will enjoy from the get go.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 06/23/08

Game Release: GunBound (US, 2004)