Gun Skaters

Genre: Top-Down Action / Arcade

Players: 1-4 Competitive / Team Co-Op / Co-Op (Local, Online), Online Leaderboards

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Review:

Gun Skaters is a multiplayer-focused Arcade-Style Top-Down Action game released on PC and Nintendo Switch in 2021. As the name implies, this game has players shooting each other with guns while on ice skates.

The presentation in Gun Skaters is a bit on the bland side, using repetitive pixel art visuals and a somewhat irritating soundtrack. The visuals really could have used a lot more variety, as players will only be fighting on a snowy field, a snowy soccer field, or a boxy area made of wooden boards. That’s it. What’s worse, obstacles like cacti are so pale that they blend into the background, making them harder to see.

The idea behind the gameplay here is somewhat decent, at least – it’s an arena shooter, but where everyone has unsure footing with a lot of inertia (because, you know, skates). Unfortunately, the aiming controls here are terrible (this should have been a two-stick shooter), the AI is pretty dumb, and the game refuses to let you play without four characters – either human or AI.

There are three game modes, and of them all, the generic “last man standing” mode is probably the best, with players trying to out-survive the others in a shoot-out. Unfortunately this mode is unbalanced by the occasional presence of explosive barrels, whose blast covers way too much of the battlefield, and that don’t damage the one who set them off, meaning the first player to shoot them is likely to at least get a free kill or two, if not outright win the round.

The second mode has players competing in a soccer match, and this one is probably the worst – there’s no shooting, so all that’s left is the unreliable movement as players fumble their way at trying to get the ball into the opponents’ goal. Finally, the third mode is a co-op mode where players try to shoot against invading zombies. The problem here is that these zombies spawn absurdly slow, meaning you’re often be waiting for them to arrive rather than actually doing anything. What’s more, this mode should absolutely not be played with computer-controlled players, as the AI likes to hog the limited ammo, and they don’t make good use of it on enemies.

I should note that this game does support online play, but I was unable to find a single match while playing the game, so don’t count on making use of this feature unless you have friends with the game.

Overall, Gun Skaters is a decent idea that’s brought down by frustrating controls (even within the context of a game that’s supposed to have frustrating controls), and brought down further by a terrible lack of content, bad AI, and empty online servers. There are plenty of better multiplayer-focused Top-Down Action games on the Nintendo Switch, get one of those instead.

tl;dr – Gun Skaters is a multiplayer-focused Top-Down Action game where players shoot at each other while wildly moving around on skates. This game controls poorly, has a terrible lack of content, has empty online servers… in short, this game gets a lot wrong and very little right. Skip it.

Grade: D

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