Originally titled "Homicidal All-Stars," ShowGunners brings pure turn-based tactical combat to the fore, forcing you, Scarlett Martillo, to outwit dozens of traps throughout the cyber-urban arenas, and navigate through hoards of heavily armed psychopaths. With dynamic level design and hidden challenges, ShowGunners aims to surprise and delight even the noobiest of noobs to the turn-based genre: which is perfect for me!

Weighing in at just 8 GB with the latest updates at the time of release, ShowGunners packs in 46 achievements, and approximately 12 hours of games play, though it may take a little longer for completionists!

Minimum System Requirements:

• 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-7400 / AMD Ryzen 5 1600
• Memory: 8 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 960 4 GB / Radeon RX 570 4 GB

Recommended System Requirements:

• 64-bit processor and operating system
• OS: Windows 10 64-bit
• Processor: Intel Core i5-9400F / AMD Ryzen 5 5600X
• Memory: 16 GB RAM
• Graphics: GeForce GTX 1080 8 GB / Radeon RX 5700 XT 8 GB

Initially, I had issues with a C++ redistributable error on my Win11 laptop, but after manually installing the latest x64 package, which took mere seconds to locate and deploy, the game booted immediately. Phew!

The system requirements aren't too out of reach by today's standards, and the graphics look outstanding with heavily-stylised characters that fuse action heroes with cybernetic augmentations, and dramatic scenery that really sets the mood and tempo of ShowGunners.

ShowGunners Eases You In, and Then Ramps Up The Action

With four difficulty settings from "Easiest" up to "Ironman" which adds in permadeath, there are modes for beginners as well as seasoned veterans. Starting out you find yourself downed and dragging yourself towards a healing station. With an aesthetic akin to that of Smash TV and The Running Man, ShowGunners is set on the fictitious gameshow "Homicidal All-Stars" and it's up to you to engage and survive.

With my only previous tangible experience of the turn-based strategy genre being Worms on the SNES in the 90's, and a spot of Metal Gear Acid back in 2005, my TBS gaming vernacular is extremely limited compared to even the average PC gamer in terms of ability and prowess.

Thankfully ShowGunners eases you in with a series of small linking sections that you control via WASD (or the left thumbstick on a controller). Once in combat mode, the game shifts to its turn-based core and forces you to use the RMB to move, and once your chosen tactic is selected, the LMB or the space bar performs the manoeuvre. Selecting from assault, melee, wide-shots, grenades, overwatch and more, there is a slew of options for you to chain together in order to massacre everyone.

The control scheme is basic but lends itself well to keeping the game engaging. You simply move or reload, then attack depending on the cool-down of the moves you performed previously. If it were too overly complicated I think I would have lost interest in the game almost immediately. Thankfully the menus are extremely straightforward and the movements required are manageable and well-explained in the opening areas, especially for beginners.

After your first tutorial encounters, you convene with Marty Manson, who, in all honesty, looks like a '90s biker from a game where you could create your own wrestler. Nevertheless, you team up and tackle your first mini-boss of sorts, the katana-wielding Ronin. During this tense trading of blows you will find yet more scum entering the arena to distract you from the main objectives. Not only this, but the show's blood-thirsty director Orion Ford also sprinkles his own flavour of anarchy across the arena, every so often, by way of surprise twists to really get your adrenalin pumping mid-battle and satiate his quest to boost viewer ratings.

Using these barrels as explosive traps, you can gauge the blast radius of these incendiary devices to use them to your advantage and decimate the grunts in next to no time. Hitting the perfect balance of spread and explosivity: you can effectively perform fatalities on the opposing fodder who have haplessly taken refuge behind any red barrels. It's fun and engaging flanking your foes and smashing them to giblets using melee attacks or explosive environmental tricks, but overall it's relatively simple and unsurprisingly quite repetitive in places.

Gorgeous Visuals But A Little Choppy In Explorative Areas

The environments are fantastic. The cyberpunk-esque dystopian imagery at work here builds a superb playground within which you have to kill or be killed. There are flaming pits, smokey alleyways, steam bursting from drains and pipes and neon lighting illuminating your pathways as you explore the various episodes' scenery; however, there are no alternate biomes here, just the singular-styled yet incredibly well-curated Mad Max looking reality game-show decor throughout.

In later episodes, you have to keep your wits about you to dodge acid pools and trains, avoid spiked traps and defuse trip wires. Across the 8 episodes and optional arena battles you have plenty to do before you encounter the season finale boss: Ulysses! No spoilers here!

Graphics are sublime throughout, though the framerate chugs a little at times during the more traditional trailing third-person camera free-roam sections. I personally loved the juxtaposition of the exploration mode with the battle mode, as it gave me time to enjoy the scenery from multiple angles whilst hunting down audio logs and elusive loot crates, dishing out autographs to idolizing fans, and locating more lethal weaponry between rounds of the fixed-angle turn-based game-show sections.

The sound effects are nice, though I didn't notice much ambience around the various environments. The announcer has a glib blurb for everything, as he narrates the entirety of battles from start to finish. You would think that this would become jarring or annoying, yet somehow it doesn't. The Wave Race 64-esque commentary builds the tensions, explains what is about to happen, and punctuates mechanics to allow you to understand what is going on at every moment. For the viewers watching along at home, this guy is very good at his job and definitely understands how to whip up the crowd to build a blood-thirsty audience and increase viewer ratings for the future of TV entertainment!

ShowGunners Could Hugely Benefit From Randomizers

By the end of the game you will have unlocked six of the show's megastars, including Tybalt the illusionist, Zoe the heavy gunner, Phantom the sniper or Marcus the grenadier, and each character has their own combination of moves and skills that allows you to replay levels slightly differently. Each member of the team you build has a skill tree and a customisable loadout based on the arsenal you acquire through exploration or winning prior episodes.

For this alone, the game provides some level of longevity and replayability, even though in essence, the characters are hugely familiar tropes with nothing particularly unique or groundbreaking about them. But that's kind of ok because the familiar nature of the cast makes you feel right at home with their abilities the instant you enlist them to your crew.

Throw into each arena the inevitable plot-twist mechanic of Mr. Ford dowsing the stages with acid, forcing you to fight on a live train track, or dropping explosives around the stages willy-nilly, and you get some uniquely playable scenarios that implore you to try it a different way, or try to ace it better and try to fit in even more grizzly kill cams!

ShowGunners is fun. More fun than I expected, and I believe the presentation has a lot to do with it. With the gameplay being quite linear and predictable, you can always ensure your own personal gratification by drilling your enemies down to the wire and then mutilating them with a fatal blow whichever way you want to, including employing environmental kills.