Gallery shooters on Samsung’s mobile head-mounted display (HMD) Gear VR are fairly prevalent due to aiming with your head being easy and intuitive to use, and no extra controller is needed. While this is great in some respects it does mean that developers need to come up with original ideas that help their videogame standout from the crowd. The Binary Mill’s Gun Club 3 VR goes for a realistic approach, with authentic weapons all set in a gun range, making for an interesting but occasionally flawed experience.
Bringing the popular mobile title onto the Gear VR, The Binary Mill knows what to give gamers in a compact gun toting videogame; an impressive assortment of options to play with, lots of guns and stuff to shoot. Gun Club 3 VR instantly throws you into the action popping an assault rifle in your hands and some targets to put holes in.
Purely single player, Gun Club 3 VR makes up for no multiplayer options by giving you a wealth of modes to choose from. On the central map where everything is located the warehouse serves as the main hub which has four different shooting modes to choose from. Each weapon class has 40 available missions building in difficultly and cash rewards. There’s a zombie mode (most gun titles seem to have one), a marksman mode purely dedicated to using the sniper rifle and finally three daily challenges. On top of all that is the shooting alley where guns and upgrades can be trialled.
And as you progress though, the cash you earn can be spent unlocking new weapons and attachments to give you a much better advantage in the higher levels. And there’s quite a selection to pick from. The store is split into each weapon category, shotguns, SMG’s, assault rifles and so on. Pick something you like then its time to upgrade, and here you’re spoilt for choice, being able to improve attributes such as accuracy, damage, handling and capacity to make each gun ruthlessly effective.
The actual gun ranges themselves are simple enough affairs. Set inside a warehouse full of plywood built structures from which targets pop out from. All the levels feature the same design set, just with different layouts to add some variety. But its this continual bland styling that lets Gun Club 3 VR down somewhat. So much time and effort has been paid to the weapon design, the sound each one makes, and its authenticity that the actual levels feel kind of an after thought. The pistol is the first gun you’ll actually own and once you worked through all 40 challenges for it, it’s then time to repeat the process for the next weapon class. Once you’ve seen wooden targets appear in a warehouse 40 times wanting to repeat the process does start to grate slightly.
The challenges are mixed-up by shooting in darkened warehouses, sniping targets in windows and on rooftops, but the repetition will be noticeable to most players. Head to the zombie mode however and the tension does start to ramp up. Unlike the other levels where targets are stationary, or moving along an allotted path the zombies are coming at you. This puts extra emphasis on getting those headshots and choosing the right tool for the job. The damage upgrades even feature zombie ammo for some extra destructive force.
All in all Gun Club 3 VR’s gameplay has plenty of addictive replayable elements to it, which fans of gallery shooters will love. The wealth of options to unlock alongside 41 in-game achievements keeps the title interesting without feeling bloated. It just a shame all this effort couldn’t have gone a little more towards the one area that needed more variety, the actual ranges. That maybe just one negative but it does run through the entire videogame.
