Game Reviews

Few moments in a competitive first-person shooter feel as good as nailing someone with a rocket from across the map. It's a satisfaction that comes from knowing that you not only had swift reflexes and precise aim, but that you out-thought him and knew exactly where he planned to be before he did. That's the sensation that ShootMania Storm is built around. Its humble graphics are deceptively simple, as its modes incorporate some really clever ideas that make it a tense and unique experience, at least for a little while.

This is a PC shooter through and through, and that has both good and bad connotations. On the one hand, it's packed full of little options missed by most modern shooters, from dedicated servers and LAN play to the ability to individually choose the color of every letter in your player name. There are so many of these old-school features, in fact, that the absence of a server ping indicator on the server browser is extremely strange. On the other hand, there's a general lack of UI polish and consistency. The flashy tile-based main menu screen that looks like something designed to run on an iPad, which makes no sense for a mouse-and-keyboard shooter, and the moment you go down a level into the server browsers and options it switches to a totally different, cluttered, and less-than-intuitive style.

Once you find your way into a game – which is easier on some modes than others – ShootMania looks like a typical run-and-gun, bunny-hopping FPS, with up to 16 players bouncing around and blasting each other. I certainly don't mean to suggest that a fast-paced arena shooter needs to have the prettiest graphics in town, but it needs to be said that even maxed out, these graphics have nothing on the six-year-old Unreal Tournament 3. Worse, there are only two boring character models included by default. On the bright side, you'll probably get good smooth framerates on any respectable PC hardware, which is more important in a game like this, and the Green Lantern-esque glow of the characters makes them easy to spot at against any background.

What sets ShootMania apart, then, are its simple but inventive mechanics that make its four included modes feel dramatically differently from the likes of Quake and UT. The biggest 

difference  is the default energy weapon. It doesn't look like much (it doesn't actually look like anything – there's nothing on the screen but a crosshairs), and the idea of what's effectively a rocket launcher with no splash damage doesn't sound exciting. Where it gets interesting is the fact that you have to land a direct hit on a maneuverable target with a relatively slow-moving projectile. That's a feat that takes a lot more skill than hosing someone down with bullets, and at any significant range it means shooting at where the enemy will be, not where he is. Scoring a hit feels great.

You also have to manage the recharging ammo, which adds its own dimension to the shooting. Do I fire all five shots the moment I spot a target and hope for a quick kill? If I miss, I'll only be able to fire once every few seconds in the ensuing battle for survival. Or do I fire slowly and deliberately, holding my capacitor's charge in reserve in case I get a better opportunity up close? It's a style that encourages hit-and-run tactics you don't see a lot of elsewhere.

The other two weapons, however, are as bland as they sound: a sniper laser and a grenade launcher. But the reasons I dislike them have more to do with the unconventional conditions of their use. You can't pick them up – instead, they're automatically equipped when you stand in certain designated spots. This idea hasn't really grown on me, for two reasons: one, it's really limiting to only be able to use them from very small areas, and two, I hate how I lose the ability to jump when standing on one of these or a speed-running strip. That inconsistency in the controls has led to far too many deaths, and even now that I've learned to expect it, it's a constant frustration.

Combining those inventive player and weapon mechanics with some really interesting mode design tips the balance back in ShootMania's favor, though. The simplest mode, Royal, starts as a 16-player round-based free-for-all on a large map, but a minute or two into each round a deadly storm closes in. It's a very clever way of keeping the last few players in close-quarters combat, but the tradeoff is that these final duels almost always end in a bizarre "pole dance" as two players zip around the only piece of cover available in the small space. It's definitely a new spin on the ancient deathmatch concept, though, and there's some good risk-reward in play as you decide whether to attempt to capture that center pole for extra points.

Battle is a relatively simple team-based point-capture mode. But because only one team can capture poles at a time, there's some interesting strategy to be had in manipulating the turnover timer, many of which involve suicidal sacrifices. The battles get furious when the one team is down to protecting a single pole, and all the action is focused on it.

Joust is a one-on-one duel, but limited ammo and alternating reload checkpoints keep it moving fast and furious, with constant ambushes. I love how you have to score two consecutive hits to finish an enemy off, too. It makes exciting comebacks feel very possible. Oddly, though, it's extremely difficult to find anybody to play with on the North American servers. Most of the time there's no one there but the tumbleweeds.

Finally, Elite mode has one attacker trying to kill or evade three defenders to capture a point in a brutally difficult game of cat and mouse. It's intense hunt-and-be-hunted action, as long as you're playing – the biggest fault is that two players sit out every round while their teammate is on the attack. That's quite a bit of downtime, though you do get to watch through your teammate's eyes.

These are all great ideas for modes, but even though each is interesting to play for a bit, it's not long before they start to wear thin unless you intend to play competitively. And unlike the arena shooters of old, there are no bots to practice against here. You're either playing against often-vicious human players or not at all. All you can do alone is run around the maps to get the lay of the land, and having done a bit of that, I doubt any of the maps currently included are destined to become classics like Quake 3's Q3DM17 or Unreal Tournament's Facing Worlds. Most are well laid-out, symmetrical battlefields with tons of easy escape routes, at least.

The overall vibe I get from ShootMania is that it's clearly far more concerned with being tuned for hardcore competitive eSport play than with niceties like accessibility, or even attempting to create an illusion of taking place in a realistic or particularly attractive world. I'm no pro gamer, but it does appear that if ShootMania can attract an audience, it'll serve the hyper-competitive crowd well. The included map and modding tools are encouraging, though – the community may well create some really interesting stuff on this platform, given time.