Reviews// Shootmania: Storm

There’s really not that much meat to these modes – I found Joust in particular quite unappealing as it really cuts down on the mass havoc and actually forces you to test your skills - but they exist more as a showcase of how the rules, weapon parameters and team sizes can be changed around in editing to create more diverse match types. Even in the beta stages more nuanced game types were being introduced and I’m sure things will get more interesting once the modding community has a better handle on how things work.

Speaking of the modding side of things, I did have a bit of a dabble in the map editor with mixed results. There are two options upon starting to create a map, the Simple and Advanced modes, with Advanced offering greater customisation and potential for tweaking. I stuck to the somewhat more inviting 'Simple' mode. The interface in either mode is pretty clean, however, though 'Advanced' is obviously a bit more crowded with options.

It’s easy to throw together a basic map, but more ambitious designs will require a lot more patience than I had. My spiralling ramp into the sky looked quite impressive, at least, though I’m sure its validity as an actual combat zone would be questionable at best. Most important however, is the ease with which personal maps can be saved and uploaded, and such accessibility should give the community a solid boost right out of the gate.

Presentation is probably the area that lets ShootMania down the most. I never thought of myself as being one of ‘those’ people who really get worked up over graphics in their games, but even I found ShootMania to be a little underwhelming visually. The environments are fairly bland and somewhat blocky, and the medieval foresty theme they’ve got going on means things will start to feel quite samey very quickly, regardless of how much the actual landscapes can change from map to map.

It’s a little hard to judge the character models and animation, not only because the game moves so fast that you’ll have other things to focus on, but also because ShootMania highlights enemies in bright single colours so you can easily differentiate between them and follow their movements even from a distance. It’s a case of practicality over style that probably benefits the gameplay, but it’s a bit tacky-looking nonetheless.

Games like this usually offer robust character customisation to help you stand out from the online crowd a little, but ShootMania doesn’t offer anything of the sort at the moment. This does seem to be open to change however, and as with all things ShootMania, there’s likely to be some room for the modders to build a library of character skins in time.

This is a really difficult game to pin a numerical score down on, mostly due to the focus on user-created content. How well ShootMania holds up will ultimately depend on how strong a modding community it builds around itself because without some strong custom content I’m not sure if the game can go the distance. Nadeo does have a good record of building solid modding communities with TrackMania, so maybe my worries won’t last long after the game’s release

But for now, even if maybe it’s just down to me being too mainstream and spoiled, ShootMania simply feels too lacking in content. It’s a fun shooter that’s definitely easy to pick up and blast through a few rounds any time you like, but I found playing for longer stretches to grow fairly dull and repetitive. Regardless, there is definitely potential here that a bit of dedicated workmanship could probably tap into. I imagine that if more creatively-driven and tech-savvy fans do find themselves drawn to ShootMania then there may eventually be something very special here. So the ball’s really in their court now.

Pros
+ Lots of map creation support.
+ Simple, easy to learn but difficult to master gameplay.

Cons
- Lacking in content without mods.
- Bland no-frills presentation.

SPOnG score: 7/10