Guns Up! is a side-scrolling strategy game where players assume the role of general to destroy the enemy’s forces. Your job is to direct your resources appropriately and help your troops achieve victory. This objective isn’t difficult to achieve, and the game starts a tutorial if it’s your first time playing. In a match, you’ll either be on the invading side or the base defense side. There isn’t much difference between either side’s play style, but the objective changes. If you’re invading, your goal is to bring down the enemy base. If you’re defending, you want to repel the invaders and keep your base intact. It’s a pretty simple objective, but you have to strategize well or suffer a crushing defeat. From the Main Menu, you’ll have access to your Depot, your Inventory, Missions, your Barracks and the choice to go to War. Your Depot allows you to customize characters and purchase card packs, gold, bundles, and different boosts. Your Inventory allows you to use the items you’ve purchased, while the Missions tab lets you track challenges. The Barracks allows you to power up your troops with upgrades and the War tab is to engage in combat. Time to hit that strategizing table, though.
Guns Up! isn’t very hard to grasp in terms of controls. You’ll have a top down view of the map and can move the camera using the Right Analog Stick. If you’re invading, your base will be a moving truck. You’ll be given two rows of commands to select an action to perform. You can summon troops from the bottom row by selecting the desired troop and pressing the (X) button or send in special commands to perform from the top row. Your summoned units will pour out of this truck and march along the road, stopping only to attack something. A counter in the bottom right will show how many units you currently have on the field in the bottom right and you cannot exceed this number. It’s a good idea to keep a good mix of troops on the field to cover your bases. Troops cost a certain amount of munitions to summon and you can get more by killing targets on the battlefield. If you run out, you won’t be able to summon more troops and you better pray that your truck can finish everything off if you run out of units. The battle doesn’t end until either your transport truck or the enemy base is destroyed, so be sure to issue the proper commands.
If you fancy a challenge, Guns Up! has you covered. Players will be able to complete multiple challenges which they can view from the Missions tab of the Main Menu. These challenges have a timer showing how long you have to complete them. The timer can be viewed on the right of the screen. Running out of time, completing missions, or skipping them will change the list and allow players to try new challenges. Keep in mind that skipping challenges will cost a certain amount of gold. Challenges yield rewards to the player which, of course, will vary from challenge to challenge. You could get new objects to barricade your base with or munitions for your troops. You don’t have to think too much about the challenges since you’ll complete most of them while simply playing the game, but it is nice to have something to track.
The pride and joy of Guns Up! is the multiplayer. You’ll mostly be invading other players since that’s the only mode available until level 5. From the Main Menu, just select the War tab and jump right in. When you go to the Player versus Player tab, you’ll see a list of people you can invade. You can see a preview of the player’s base before you invade so that you’ll know what you’re up against and can choose a different player if one seems too daunting of a challenge for you currently. Always pick your battles carefully.
