Showgunners review

While the social satire lacks some bite, Showgunners blend of murderous spectacle and XCOM-style strategy is a title tactics aficionados won’t want to miss.

Formerly known as Homicidal All-Stars, Warsaw-based developers Artificer changed the name of their latest game to Showgunners. The new moniker is decidedly less garish, but it’s hard not to wish that the studio tweaked the tone of the game as well.

There’s nothing blatantly wrong with the storytelling, which centers on the exploits of Scarlett Martillo. While her motivations aren’t elucidated until later in the game, the crimson-haired protagonist is a rookie contestant on Homicidal All-Stars. This is one of those dystopian game shows where competitors engage in a gladiatorial duel to the death, just to entertain a frenzied viewership.

Kill Bait

Much like The Running Man or Squid Games, Showgunners envisions a society that’s lost all sense of compassion. Prisoners serve as fodder for the game’s bloodshed, lured in by the far-flung possibility of surviving, where freedom and a lofty payout await. In Showgunners’ world, justice has been completely perverted. Former police officer Martillo enters the competition to hunt down the man who murdered her family. Although she previously apprehended the killer, a winning run on Homicidal All-Stars meant he escaped penalty and earned fame instead. Yes, Showgunners plumbs some dark places.

But its presentation feels like something out of a comic book or one of James Gunn’s blockbusters. The dialog is pulpy and sporadically, Showgunners elicits a depraved laugh. During episodes, there are moments where you’ll walk past a crowd of leering fans hoping for an autograph. I saw able to tell one to “fuck off” via a dialog tree, pissing the guy off and earning a sneering retort. Interestingly, these choices let you shape Martillo’s temperament, which affects the possibility of perk-supplying corporate endorsements. Yes, companies like WarMart will court you based on your performance but also your attitude.

Combat Moves at a Brisk Pace

But Scarlett as well as the other six characters that can accompany you into each blood-soaked episode are all a bit one-dimensional. This is a woman who has everything taken from her. Instead of empathizing with her emotional anguish and seeing her turn that torment into pure anger, the serviceable voicework and workmanlike writing hint at the potential of what Showgunners could have conveyed. Instead, it’s all slightly campy, as All-Stars’ nattily dressed showrunner pushes buttons to reveal acid pits and drops explosive barrels to amplify the ratings.

While Showgunners characterization can’t quite match the sense of atmosphere, the turn-based combat manages to be thoroughly engaging. The blueprint is XCOM, with your team of Scarlett and up to two allies taking to gridded battlefields dotted with partial and complete cover protection. In keeping with convention, you’ll spend action points to move around and use your skills. Of course, when you need protection from an explosion or a group of enemies released into an adjacent area, you can sprint to safety, using all your points. Best of all, it never quite feels like the random number generator is testing the limits of your tolerance.

Get Fuming Mad at Foes Who Pop Smoke

You’ll fight a variety of different foes, which range from basic helmet-clad Scum, katana-wielding, speedy Ronin, as well as machine-gun toting, highly resilient Ogres. Across the game’s four difficulty levels (as well as Iron Man-mode, which prevents save scumming), success hinges on proper target prioritization as well as harnessing the strengths of each ally unit.

Spread out across the campaign, you’ll meet all of the archetypical classes, adding a machine gunner, sniper, grenadier, and a decoy-dropping illusionist. Even before you start cultivating each ally’s individual skill tree, each unit feels both distinctive and dominant on the studio floor. Early on, Scarlet can earn an additional action point from each killing. Harness the potential of this skill, and she’ll bounce around like a king in a game of checkers, wiping an area clean of threats.

Some might take issue with Artificer’s decision to handicraft their own stages, which does constrain replayability. And if there’s a single change that I’d like to see with Showgunners, it would be the inclusion of a New Game+ mode with procedurally generated stages. That may never happen, so you’ll have to find contentment in a campaign that’s balanced, enjoyable, and includes some well-scripted events from that asshole showrunner.

Proficient Performance on Deck

Although obtaining an ideal standpoint on the battlefield is a bit harder than it should be, Showgunners demonstrates few other performance flaws. On a RTX 2070 Super, the game delivered largely seamless output at 1440p, blemished mainly by a slight hiccup during the kill shots. While some of the details are a bit difficult to see, Showgunners plays suitably on Steam Deck. Frame rate obsessives like me can tweak the render resolution percentage, dialing back the fidelity only to upscale back to your native resolution. At 80%, there should be a minimum of hiccups.

The back-at-base moments can be some of the weakest moments in any XCOM-type game. Here, Showgunners certainly has potential, between the chatter between teammates, recording confessional-style vlogs, as well as the obligatory upgrades to your arsenal. It’s a brilliant idea held back by orthodox writing, which will probably have you itching to go back to the slaughter.

Showgunners was played on PC with review code provided by the publisher