Shadowgun Legends review

It’s been a couple of years since Madfinger announced its free to play game, Shadowgun Legends, but has the wait been worth it? Yes, absolutely.

This shooter is super slick and lives up to all of the bragging that’s surrounded it in those two years. Even with a couple of negatives to work around, I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.

Shadowgun Legends is a Destiny-like first-person shooter where you play as a celebrated soldier. The overall plan is to take on quests, shoot aliens, and build your own legend.

You can play through a detailed first-person campaign, carrying out missions and side quests to earn cash and gear, or take on other players in PvP battles for even greater rewards.

It may only offer up a handful of personal features to begin with, but the customisation in this game is bountiful. Change up your armour and weapons, use spray paint to personalise the colours, slowly fill out your skill tree, buy masks if you fancy splashing some cash, and much more.

The graphics show off what mobile games can really achieve, rivalling the likes of GRID Autosport, and the game’s performance is consistent and fluid. There were a couple of framerate hiccups when playing, but that could’ve been down to my device as much as anything.

Enemies start off pretty easy, but as you progress you meet a larger variety with different tactics and gear, and eventually take on the big, bad bosses. While there are a lot of enemies to blitz through in each mission, Shadowgun Legends’ controls make it feel like more of a dream than a chore.

You use the left side of the screen to move and the right side to aim, look around, or shoot. It’s a tried and tested combination that we know works, and it’s no different this time round. While you’re started off on auto-shooting, you can switch that to manual shooting if you want the full experience.

One of the coolest features is the game’s hub named - er - HUB. This is where you arrive when you first boot up the game and where you come back to every time you complete a mission.

In it you can drink, eat, gamble, dance, upgrade your weapons, grab new missions, grab side missions for gold, and interact with other players. This could be as simple as a hello or you could be head bobbing opposite each other to non-existent music, the choice is yours.

It’s a neat feature that puts some of the fun back into multiplayer gaming. Rather than running around the hub trying to shoot and punch each other, it’s basically a big, online bar where the worst thing that can happen is that you’re ignored by someone you’re waving at.

Shadowgun Legends is a beautifully crafted sci-fi shooter that’s been well worth the wait. Sometimes it’s hard to believe it’s a free to play game, god knows I would’ve paid premium for something like this at the drop of a hat, but hopefully that dreaded paywall is still a while away.