GunZ: The Duel

[VodkaEnergee]

Here is another one many may not know about. Came out in 2003. Fans have made Mods for it. Has any heard about this, have any experience with it, can give more info? There is also a second one called: GunZ 2: The Second Duel. Either game could be a new thing for any of you all, to get into.

Videos on it:

 

[madmadworld2]

I remember playing the second one when it first came out thinking it was an arena shooter, ended up being alittle more technical. i thought it was ok just got a little repetitive after a while.

 

[Clippy]

I played the first game ages ago. I think it was around 2006 or 7 and man what a fun concept it was, especially the PvE mode. Unfortunately, I remember dropping it pretty quickly because it was so focused on trying to get you to spend money the game suffered for it. The grind got unbearably slow rather quickly. Another thing was the amount of hackers. Obviously, it sucked for PvP but weirdly enough they were a blessing in PvE since after you got to level 20 (I think? It's been a while) the difficulty spike was such horseshit that it was basically impossible to complete a level without a hacker slaughtering everything. Never played the second one. I see it's actually still available on Steam though the page looks like a ghost town.

Ultimately, it's just another one of those games I played in that phase of my life I liked playing online but it didn't stick with me because of the aforementioned reasons. Kwonho was another such game in my life (though in this case they literally shut down the servers 5 days after I discovered it, true story)

Curious to see it supposedly returning to Steam after all these years, maybe I'll give it a go for old times' sake when/if it comes out but I'm not expecting much.

 

[Heretic]

ohhh, I haven't played this one in an age. I was introduced to it in probably 2004 when I was going to university, and was introduced to it by a friend who I played Ragnarok Online with. I remember it being a ton of fun to play with friends, but like what Clippy was saying the game heavily pushed you to make a cash money purchase, with the alternatives being to either just cheat, or grind for hours upon hours to have enough to "rent" an item for a week. I could probably check it out for a couple of hours if it were to ever make a come back.

 

[MrFabulous]

I played a truly insane amount of bad korean MMO's in the early-mid 00's based entirely on the great art (that you would only see in the launcher and loading screens). I think GunZ in particular had an absolutely ruthless learning curve so I didn't stick with it too long, but it was definitely from an era that I look back on fondly. I tried to find some of the old art a while back but very little of it was preserved (at least on english language sites) and nothing that I could find looked very familiar.

 

[Spike]

I played it back in the day, the first game, when Maiet still handled it before they sold the rights to ijji. I remember the GunZFactor forums were quite popular. Personally, I wasn't very good; I was mostly a mindless "sprayer." There were players performing insane "k-style" moves that were way beyond my skill level. If they got in your face doing that butterfly move, it was all over.

The thing about GunZ was that most of the moves players used weren't intentionally designed by the developers, I think. People just figured them out, and the developers never fixed them, so they became a significant part of the game.

Gunz2 I remember watching the gameplay by steparu a million years ago, something like this:

And thinking, "oh man" this is gonna be huge. But by the time I got to play it, it was already a dead game. I think it never cached on precisely because they removed the glitchy movements that made the first game great.

Maiet also released a MMORPG i loved back in the day called RaiderZ.

Both RaiderZ and GunZ can still be played in private servers, but they did not age very well compared to the beast games we have nowadays.

 

[Somnia]

A couple friends in highschool introduced me to the game via a private server called EuroGunZ. It removed MTX for gear which more or less eliminated the P2W aspect that plagued retail. I remember being intrigued by it being third person and having an art style that stood out to me more. My friend challenged me to a 1v1 right away and said "I won't even fire my guns" and I thought he was fucking with me. Promptly got decimated, which is when he told me about K-Style. Spent many hours grinding away at learning how to do it and even broke my first keyboard because of just how much APM it requires alongside me always being oafish and heavy handed when pressing keys. Ah memories :')

Game is absolutely timeless, though it is obviously super intimidating for newcomers to jump into the private servers. Honestly you can learn some basic K-Style techniques and hang just fine in most FFA lobbies (by which I mean you'll get a few kills and won't feel helpless). If you do wanna take the next step it is worth it as the act of K-Styling is unlike any other game I've played and feels just as fun as flexing your mechanical skill in a game like Melee does.

EuroGunZ also had a super sick soundtrack full of trance bangers! Not sure what other servers did for music but I'm eternally grateful for EuroGunZ introducing me to various styles of EDM.

I also got into S4 League, which always drew comparisons to GunZ for being a stylish F2P third person shooter. While it dropped GunZ's more gritty, muted art style in favor of more bright and overtly sci-fi anime aesthetics, it was still a treat! I played that on retail servers. It also had a fun as hell soundtrack, this time full of original tunes!