Future Guns review

We review Future Guns, an iPhone app that offers a cross breed of shooter gaming and a gun simulation

Here we have another of those awesome apps that refuses to fit into the game or application pigeonholes. Future Guns marks a wide territory for itself, dipping toes in the reference, entertainment, gaming and simulation ponds all at once, all while managing to avoid wearing schizophrenia on its sleeve.

It does have a serious and disturbing gun fetish, worthy of a redneck trailer park, but that’s an entirely different neurosis altogether.

So what is Future Guns? Well, that’s actually a bit difficult to describe, but there’s one thing that’s very easy to say about this app. If you’re really into guns – if you’re the kind of person that reads magazines on the subject, has models and replicas, and can name all those moving parts – you’ll really enjoy Future Guns. Just buy it. It was made for your brand of obsessive compulsive disorder.

That’s not to say it isn’t also fascinating to the hobbyist shooter, or even the trigger-happy novice. An armoury of existing, new and future guns (not just a clever name) is available for you to choose from, and then take out onto four difference types of shooting range to test them out.

The third-person range is perhaps the most fascinating, which gives you a side-on view of the firearm you’ve selected. But this isn’t just a high-res picture, or an automatic animation. The guns feature moving, operational parts that can be operated as you inspect the machine. You can pull the trigger, with full muzzle climb and recoil as the gun fires; you can reload the ammo; pull back the slider; eject the bullets; switch between firing modes and basically fiddle with the mechanism as much as you desire.

The three other ranges land more in the gaming realm, rather than the simulation seen in the third-person range. Now the gun is in your hand and aiming forward, with accelerometer-controlled crosshairs and a point-scoring objective. The ranges get more and more difficult as you progress, and the game ends when you run out of ammo.

Then the app returns to the reference / simulation realm, with detailed information and statistics on the available weaponry, which should provide invigorating reading for the well-armed anorak.

It’s probably a stretch to recommend buying Future Guns based on its gaming parts, but we have to admit that gaming is a little less than half of the app’s real intention. If you’ve any kind of gun fascination – whether it’s shooting them, the engineering behind them, or the skills involved in using them -- Future Guns delivers where other shooters never bother to go.

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