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Blockstorm

Blockstorm: Early Access Impressions

It's full of right angles, but is it the right angle?

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A game the fuses the blockbuster action of Call of Duty with the creativity and community of Minecraft is probably the holy grail of gaming, and it's the reason why there's so many titles in recent years that have had a bite at this particular apple.

It's also no coincidence that none have succeeded, because the blocky appearance of Minecraft and the gritty and visceral gameplay style of CoD (and other comparable shooters - CoD is just a placeholder name at the end of the day) are two distinct styles that have very little in common.

We played Ace of Spades not long after it was released and thought it was ok, and we've also sampled titles such as CastleMiner Z on the Xbox 360. There's also other options already on the market, such as Guncraft and the free-to-play offering of Brickforce. Many have tried, and so far none have come anywhere close to realising the success of Minecraft, or any of the major shooter franchises.

Step up Blockstorm, the latest game to take on the heavyweights with a block-filled battlefield and a hard-edged visual finish. The question is, does Blockstorm succeed where the others have failed, and make a good stab at creating a decent shooter with Minecraftian sensibilities?

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Visually this is a fairly standard offering within this burgeoning sub-genre. Everything's made of blocks, and as such there's not a lot that can be done to change the overall feel of the whole. Environments are destructible, either via weapons fired, or through the spade that every player carries into battle. So instead of visual fidelity it comes down to level design and colour palette to help set it apart from the pack, but even here, there's not a massive amount of variation from what we've already seen (that said, we enjoyed playing through a recreation of Counter-Strike's classic Dust map).

One thing that we did really like, was the player customisation options. You can build your own character using smaller blocks, and this capability sits alongside a generous selection of pre-designed offerings (including a nice nod to Minecraft among others). Our favourite was the minotaur, but there were others that caught our eye on the battlefield. There's also the ability to build your own maps, so if it takes off, we'll never be short of new levels to blast through.

Once you've selected an avatar you can pick your loadout, and the weight of the equipment you choose will determine how light you are on your feet. For example, if you grab a shotgun you'll be able to move faster and get closer to your opponents more quickly than if you're using a rifle. It's a simple and effective system and we liked it.

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In terms of primary weapons there's a fairly standard selection, including the aforementioned shotty, a sniper rifle, an AK47, the heavy machine gun, and a standard rifle. Players also go into battle with a sidearm (sawn-off shotguns, pistols, uzis), grenades (or claymores or a single-shot rocket launcher), a spade, and a blade for close-quarters combat. You can even build up defences with colour-coded blocks, although we didn't see too much of that. There's tool for all jobs, even if nothing screamed originality.

There's currently three modes already in place; deathmatch, team deathmatch and assault, and more are promised. There's plenty of maps, and with the ability to make more, there's a potentially never ending stream of combat to enjoy.

So far all the trimmings work as you'd expect, and as you'd want. Unfortunately we were left a little underwhelmed from the one area that matters most. Gun handling. It's simply not as satisfying as it could be. There's not enough feedback when you're in battle, there's no heft to the gunplay. You never feel like you're carrying a powerful weapon around, except for perhaps when you're firing the sniper rifle (which is possibly slightly overpowered when compared to the rest - it's a straight-up one-shot-killer).

There's plenty of charm across the rest of BlockStorm. It's certainly on the same level as the competition it's up against (if not better), but as it stands there's still much work to be done to ensure that this game comes out of Early Access in as good a shape as is possible.

The eerily quiet servers don't help things (we hardly ever saw more than one or two public matches going on at any one time), but perhaps that's because it still feels like a work-in-progress. We'd like it to get better, we're certainly hoping that it will do so, because the promise of a Minecraft of Duty is certainly an interesting one. Blockstorm is positioned nicely to deliver something akin to that, but there's some kinks that need ironing out before we can start handing out recommendations.

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