Game Reviews

Gears & Guts

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Gears & Guts
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| Gears & Guts

If the 14-year-old version of myself - the one with the immaculate centre parting and Pearl Jam T-shirt combo - had designed a video game, it would have sounded a lot like Gears & Guts.

You'd race around a post-apocalyptic city in a customised Mad Max-style sports car, ripping through crowds of zombies with chainsaws bolted to the doors and blasting a rocket launcher to mop up any undead stragglers.

I'd have charged a sensible price for it, mind, rather than hitting you with absurd in-app purchase prices just when you're really getting into the gruesome swing of things.

Carmageddon

While it might make extortionate demands on your wallet later on, you get a solid hour or so of undead slaughter out of Gears & Guts before you have to pay a penny.

It's a cracking ride, too - your gory attempt to reclaim your zombie-overrun hometown using any vehicle modifications necessary is a gruesomely cathartic experience.

Viewed from above, Glu's game plays a lot like Polarbit's Reckless Getaway. Movement is either tilt-controlled (for those who enjoy slight dizziness with their gaming) or using reliable directional arrows to accelerate, reverse, and steer.

Aiming is handled automatically - mounted weapons range from standard assault rifles to pulse lasers and RPGs - so it's a doddle to burn around the sharply rendered city streets, parks, and shopping malls mowing down the various baddie types.

Alongside standard Walkers, some zombies explode on impact, creating gloopy oil slicks, while others latch on until you grind them into the nearest wall. Then there are the giant behemoth bosses, with sizeable energy bars to whittle down.

Bolted on costs

There's no denying that Gears & Guts is an impressive slice of mindless zombie slaughter. Aside from some jarring frame-rate lurches, it plays like a bloodthirsty dream.

So it's a shame that - no matter how far you upgrade your default vehicles with the in-game Bolt currency - you'll need to fork out a serious amount of cash to see beyond the third of six stages.

With more reasonable freemium pricing, this could have been one of the best games of the year, but having your fun stopped dead in its tracks unless you empty your wallet makes for a brief, if thrilling, ride.

Android version reviewed.

Gears & Guts

A blood-soaked, four-wheeled zombie splatterfest that's a cracking drive until the hefty in-app purchase boss monsters turn up to block off the road ahead
Score
Paul Devlin
Paul Devlin
A newspaper reporter turned games journo, Paul's first ever console was an original white Game Boy (still in working order, albeit with a yellowing tinge and 30 second battery life). Now he writes about Android with a style positively dripping in Honeycomb, stuffed with Gingerbread and coated with Froyo