PWND E3 2017 Impressions

PWND was the second game at the Skydance E3 area and since I had some time left after playing their VR game Archangel I thought I'd play a round or two. With that, I got to play one full match and half of another one while using a Xbox controller. As you can imagine, time is limited so you play as much as you can whenever the option is available. The game was setup for either control combination and being more comfortable with FPS on console I chose the Xbox controller over keyboard. PWND is a competitive first person shooter that's similar to the older arcade style such as Quake or Unreal Tournament. Everyone has strong rocket focused weapons and gameplay is really fast paced.

Picking one of the set classes you move around the environment blasting each other and then afterwards dancing on dead bodies. It takes the literal act of disgracing your opponents to a new level as you teabag them after to score points. This was of course just the mode available so I have no idea if there are other game types to it. I found the act to be less serious for a shooter making a mockery of the genre though I can see how some might find this rather amusing.


It's just rather weird to score points by dancing on bodies or stacking bodies to score more. There's actually somewhat of a strategy involved with the system. The more bodies you pile, the better the points though you need to protect the one dancing to score. It's hard to do when enemies are constantly spawning to fight and people that are "dead" can crawl to collect health in order to keep playing. The matches run relatively quick with the pacing and scoring system all working out whether well.

It seems like an alright game as far as shooters go and something players could find fun. The map was decent though small in size and I would have liked the movement as far as hitting walls to be smoother. The graphics were fine carrying a unique cartoon look and it worked for it. I'd really have to see more of it to get a better idea of the game. The impressions were written purely based on what I played at E3 2017 during one and a half matches.

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