Unreal?
Shootmania Storm is a curious game, it plays like your standard arena FPS like Unreal Tournament, but it’s simplistic in its design. Weapons are almost irrelevant and the pace is faster, instead of shooting at your enemy you need quick reflexes and shoot where they are going to be.
The menus do confuse though, it isn’t set up particularly well and hopefully will be patched for newcomers as it does take some getting used to. The arenas are pretty good to fight across and the unique game modes really do bring out the competitive nature out of gamers, but it doesn’t really have any lasting appeal. The game looks bland, character models are limited to 2 by default and aren’t very interesting to look at either, Unreal Tournament 3 looks better than this and that game is old by today’s standards.
There’s no XP or perks or anything interesting like that involved, it looks like Shootmania Storm is designed as an eSports type of game for serious competitive gamers, which is a shame since it has some real potential hidden in there, it just needs a helping hand…probably from the mod community. Building arenas is simplistic too, there’s not many tools to use either. And sadly, the game does crash from time to time.
The Verdict
Shootmania Storm doesn’t quite have the same appeal as normal arena shooters, but I do admire its simplicity. It’s just a shame it doesn’t have the lasting appeal it should, it sadly wears thin after a while of playing and with no upgrade system in place, it won’t bring in the COD crowd anytime soon, which is a shame since finding some games are difficult and some additional players would be welcome.
