Review of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online

I'm going to start this review with the bad points and try to turn it around with some good points so don't get salty if I bag it out a little, I am going to bounce back with some compliments. Alrighty, so we have another Sword Art Online show in the sequence that is in the "gaming" anime genre. But as you probably noticed the "gaming" is in quotations for a reason. There seems to be a stigma on this genre that, if you are going to write some media content for it, you won't bother learning anything about it nor anything in regards to anythingactually, just write on a whim with your 300IQ brain for solid deus ex machina actions shots.

SAO Alternative: GGO is no exception to this stigma. Throughout the entire show I consistently felt myself pausing mid episode just to take in the level of "On what planet did you write these people from?".
It seemed like every player in GGO which is labeled as a "hardcore PVP tactical battle royal" style game, had a hard time grasping any sort of game mechanic, for example;

- Using cover to evade bullets or hide from your enemy, this seems very straight forward, but not once but multiple, MULTIPLE times there are teams displayed in a tournament draft standing at a crossroad or any sorta open area with no cover, pointing in every direction saying "yea man this direction is clear", like what? what? You had to have someone pointing in every direction to establish that? You had to put 4-8 members of your squad out in the open to determine if someone was on the road? That was just the tip of the ice berg.
- We have a character say his "favored terrain is Urban" combat, such as a city, while he is in a full green camo attire, if that's the terrain you wanna fight on WHY ARE YOU NOT DRESSED FOR IT! (this wouldn't be as such a peeve if the character wasn't THAT character)
- Endlessly firing on your enemies position will eventually kill them?
- Endless ammunition, except for plot purposes. (Claiming you have 700 rounds in reserve, then killing 2 people and saying you're down to 300 after 2 bursts)
- Duel wielding grenade launchers with ease one scene, having to brace one with both of your legs the next?
- Not wearing helmets? Dying from something because the player chose to not have something that is "cosmetically" unappealing? GJ2 I'm looking at you.
- Teams being placed more than a 10 minutes trip apart, meaning the map is large enough to accommodate that, even with 25 teams, that's a LOT of downtime and comp games that have a large portion of downtime, aren't really fun to watch.
- A whole lot of "Leader", "Captain", "Friend", "Partner", "Comrade" call outs, I want to know the dudes name, I want to know who side characters are and what they're about, when someone is just refereed to as "Leader" by everyone in his squad it gives off a HUGE red flag.
- From previously watching the GGO ark in SAO its told that there is a point buy system in the game, but they're never actually told what they do, giving the impression that Karen's character is just "unnaturally" fast and not a point buy? 10/10 balancing, someone should call Ghost Crawler and tell him hes in an anime.
- People resigning because they didn't want to be shot? What? You're in a shooting simulation game, YOU'RE GOING TO GET SHOT MATE!
- Being within 200m of 2 teams shooting at each other, in a leveled field with no cover, and not having vision of them?

---------------- End of "gaming" related peeves

(Shallow Characters) -
Besides maybe a handful, most of the lead roles just had nothing really to them, the characters wern't really fleshed out further than 1-2 lines in a bio page about someone. Not to mention non-lead roles were literally the same people just named differently all wearing the same skivies.

(Scene focus and direction) -
A lot of weird scenic shots, like yea we get it, its another world, but it just looks like mountains from a hiking adventure with some rundown houses and so many still shots, like usually still shots are thrown off by a panning camera, or like something else, but when its a long shot, and you can barely see someone, and the only thing moving on the screen is the 6 pixels that make up their mouth its like, please do something different.

(Deus Ex Machina) (Did i mention deus ex machina? DEUS EX MACHINA) -
Soooo much deus ex machina, and oh man I can not stand that shit.

(Pacing) -
Its kinda weird and over the place, the action scenes are decent, fast paced and usually enjoyable, but they then get followed up by 10 mins of standing still "explaining" how something worked. Now this would be ok, if it didn't come off like, opening a fridge (obviously with explosions and me screaming and what not), then me saying "see, it keeps my beverages and food cold, allowing it to have prolonged life and eat it at a later date at which i see fit and that's how I'm able to give you this product here and now rather than buying it anew" and then you going "Whoa, that's crazy planned thinking". Its just explaining shit that's either obvious or so basic that "she shot at them while they stood still, impeccable" is dumb and boring.

------------------- End of Peeves (Yay?)

(Story) -
The story isn't really anything to write home about, but in this anime day and age we all know about the fabled, "Lets make an anime about this LN or Manga that has a built up to be lengthy story, and only bring out 1 season that barley covers the first 10 chapters so that people purchase the original media" and that kinda shit is annoying.
There are far too many shows that deserve squeals and endings that will never be, this not being one of them. In the instance that, its more written as a one-shot, there's no real BIG story, but its straight forward what the course of the show will be, and it all gets wrapped up at the end so you're not like, "DAMMIT WHY"D THEY CLIFF HANGER THIS SHIT AGAIN!"

(Audio/Art) -
I did mention this in peeves, but there are a lot of nicely drawn section that aren't the action scenes, though they did throw a decent amount into that explosion budget.
VA was pretty good, would have been superb if it had on point characters to match.

(Action and enjoyment) -
Now I'm not gunna lie, I do really like the action scenes in the whole SAO series, and if i was to put aside my game peeves, this is no different, its easy on the eyes, fast paced and silly OP characters mulching others, as silly as a bunch of it looks, you can't say that a lotta the scenes are pretty darn cool and really chill to watch after you get home from work and don't want to actually think about shit.

------------------- End of Compliments

TL;DR
Do watch if -
You like your regular SAO quick paced OP action scenes and a quick rounded story ark.

Don't watch if -
You get triggered by the way the anime game genre is, where the authors are more writing fantasy, in the sense that they want to write what ever they want to write, but use the gaming genre because its the "in thing" then don't actually look into the product itself or do any research about it, just throw some random ideas and shit together and go Michael Bay.