Guns'n'Glory Review

★★★★☆

Grab yer pistols and head-out West! Oh wait, you're already there... In that case, spend some cash to recruit a posse of injuns, bandits, and cannons to turn waves upon waves of settlers into vulture-food.


Title: Guns'n'glory | Developer: Handy Games | Genre: Strategy, Action |
Players: 1 | Version: 1.4.2 | Size: 9.3MB | Price: $4.10 

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Guns'n'glory is, at its core, a tower-defense game. For those of you not familiar with this genre, here's a run-down: Waves of enemies enter the map from various entry-points, then follow predefined paths to the exit point. Your objective is to position your crew along these paths in such a way as to maximize their damage-potential, hopefully killing everything that passes-by before it reaches the exit. Should some enemies get-through, you'll be dinged hit-points for each.

In this particular game, instead of stationary towers/pawns, you're allowed to move them around once purchased. This ends up being a nice twist, but becomes rather frustrating when other units block the path, your fingers are too big to pick one out of a crowd, or you need to move multiple units at once. It would have been really nice to be able to multi-select your pawns, but no dice. In the time that I played, I was allowed to purchase banditos (dynamite), desperados (rifles), indians (flaming arrows), cannons, and train-mounted Gatling guns. Each unit-type has differing strengths and weaknesses vs. the enemy's own units. For example, cannons do well vs. wagons but not so well vs. settlers on-foot. What's more, you eventually gain the ability to upgrade units, making them shoot faster, further, and harder. During each game, random temporary power-ups spawn around the map, adding yet another dimension to the game. All of these nice little tweaks and options give live to an otherwise drab and stagnant formula.

To hire a pawn, you must gather the cash (from killing settlers) and "wake" him up by tapping on him. At that point, you can tap-and-drag to move your new unit around the map. The screen can be scrolled by swiping the main map or the mini-map in the upper-right corner. As you move a unit to the screen-boundary, the screen will slowly scroll as well. Unfortunately, there is no option to zoom-out... a feature that would've been very handy.

Controls
As stated earlier, you tap to wake units, and tap-and-drag to move them around the screen. Swiping the screen will scroll from side-to-side.

Graphics
I've played quite a few tower-defense games, and this one has some of the best graphics I've seen. Guns'n'glory has a nice, cartoony, Western feel that works nicely. The animations are all clean and crisp, and the units look sharp.

Sound
The background music fits the theme well and the sound effects are great. I don't understand why they didn't add some "oof" or screaming sounds when people die, but that's just a nice-to-have.

Options
Be sure to read the Help tutorial, found on the main menu, before you start playing. You're given only the options of toggling vibration and phone-sleep.

Verdict
Guns'n'glory is a novel and fun twist on the old tower-defense genre, allowing for some addicting game play with a decent amount of variety. The graphics are fun and more polished than most in its class, but  after reading-through some Market user comments, it would seem that there aren't enough levels to keep people satisfied. Then again, isn't this always the case? For $4.10, this is a little pricey, but a great spin on the genre.


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