Wondershot Review

It’s time to suit up in this top-down, co-op based shooter in a fight to the death with your friends. But for how long I hear you ask? Well the truth is, not that long.

The basis of the game is you have one life and one shot to defeat your opponents. If you hit your opponent, you get to shoot again. If you miss, you are able to get the weapon back by picking it up as it will be lying around the map somewhere. Also lying around on the map is certain abilities that can be used to your advantage. These include invincibility and speed boots. Apart from that the aim of the game is to defeat all the enemies on screen and be the last man standing.

Players have a choice of four available characters, all of which are identical apart from their appearance. None of them have particular abilities to differentiate them which could have driven me to favour one over the other but in the end I just chose randomly. However, there are four different weapons available each of which having different abilities. Interestingly, the abilities change based on the environment you are in however because the environments aren’t too different to one another themselves, the change is minimal.

As the game is based around how you shoot, you would have thought the shooting mechanics would be at least average. But unfortunately, the shooting is something I have a major problem with. You can shoot quickly by tapping the ‘A’ button, and this will work on the most part if you’re firing at close range. However, if you want to sustain your shot at long range, you have to hold down ‘RT’ while moving. But this doesn’t lock onto your target, it simply locks the direction of your shot into place. This clunky mechanic is particularly off putting considering the whole game revolves around how you shoot.

The game is split into two different game modes Battle and Adventure. It’s probably best to point out first that Battle cannot be played alone. You need at least two local players in order to play this game mode. If you have two controllers and a willing gamer then you’ll manage, if not then I’m afraid you’ll be missing out on 50% of the game. It is clear this is certainly a game made for local multiplayer more than anything else.

The second game mode however can be played solo as well as co-operatively. ‘Adventure’ is split into two modes – Challenges and Endless. Challenges is very self explanatory in that the player is given a variety of objectives that they need to complete. This can range from killing a number of enemies within a set time or having to stay alive until the timer runs out. This allows players to progress onto the next chapter which increases the difficulty of the game somewhat. Similarly, Endless is a survival based mode where the aim is to stay alive for as long as possible without dying. Waves of enemies endlessly swarm players until your whole team has fallen. This starts off as enjoyable but can however become boring and tedious due to how repetitive it can become.

Strangely, despite the push for co-operative play, the only online aspect to this game is the leaderboards. This limits the game somewhat as I do feel that it is better with friends, it’s just a shame those friends cannot play the game unless they are sitting next to you.

In summary, I feel that Wondershot is an average game to play. It has its moments of brief fun, usually with friends but its repetitive nature means it does become boring a little too quickly. Not to mention the lack of online play which seriously limits the game potential. However, for the price that it is and the game time you’ll get out of it, it’s certainly not something that can simply be overlooked.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary Microsoft Xbox One code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.