What happens when you mix a boomer-shooter mentality with strategy, roleplaying, and party relationships then wrap it in a neon-western sci-fi setting? You get Wild Bastards, a game with a lot going for it, but it offers a few too many flavours to make a cohesive meal.
Diving into this Western shooter turned roguelike, I found awesome voice acting, a hammy Western script and unique visuals. But also some simplistic gameplay, difficulty spikes and a posse of characters with more than a few standouts – and a couple who are a few strings short of a banjo.
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The Great Wide Yonder
Wild Bastards is a strange mix of mechanics and ideas from the last few years of roguelikes and boomer-shooters that work well together for the most part. The story kicks off with a pair of outlaws mysteriously brought back to life after a family of outlaws put them into the ground. You then fly across the galaxy reviving the rest of the Wild Bastards as you go.
The over-arching layout of the galaxy feels very akin to the FTL: Faster Than Light maps. In these you have multiple paths laid out with nodes, each of these is a planet stacked with encounters, gear and enemies.
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When you choose a planet to land on, you’ll zoom in further to a board-game style map where your posse of Bastards moves about the board and gets into trouble. You’ll have a set number of moves each turn, and after a set number of turns one of the big baddies will land on the planet trying to hunt you down.
Every one of these maps starts by surveying the layout and deciding which items you want to go for — or where you need to make a pitstop for health or weapons — and how far out of the way you’ll go, risking the ire of the enemy gangs. Small squads of monsters and larger roadblocks are scattered across the map that divides whole areas. When you run into any of these, you’ll zoom down a third time, and into a Showdown.
It’s High Noon
These Showdowns are the core of the Wild Bastards experience. When you load in, you’ll get an overview of the enemies you’re fighting, and an idea of the map as well as any modifiers. For example, you might have three minigun-wielding enemies, eight coyotes and two gun barrels (literally a barrel with a hidden gun in it that pops up and shoots you).
The bite-sized nature of these shoot-outs is what makes them so simple and fun to jump into. In many ways, the Showdown levels remind me of old ’90s shooters like Quake or Unreal Tournament.
You might be fighting in a classic Western ghost town filled with saloons and outhouses to hide behind – or forests with treetop villages akin to the Ewoks of Endor, and cascading snowy mountaintops.
Many of these levels have destructable areas like fences, buildings to hide in and clamber on top of. The enemy AI isn’t the smartest, but various enemies will try to flank you, some of the smaller, faster enemies will attack in swarms and look to tie you up in close quarters. As you progress you’ll find some really great levels – from space colonies with lightning storms and low gravity, to poisonous swamps thick with weeds to hide in.
One big thing was missing for me.
I desperately felt the need for a simple melee button. When you run into a building and face to face with a shotgun enemy, you want to be able to whack them with the blunt end of the gun. Sadly, it’s not a thing.
The Style of the Old West
There is a great verticality to many of the levels. At the start, you’ll have balconies to climb onto, but before long you’ll have defensive forts with walls to scale or outpost towers to fight into. Most of the outposts have ladders that you can climb, but really they just teleport you from one end of the ladder to the other.
Unfortunately, the game does tend to teleport you to the top in the same orientation as the bottom, so you might be facing a wall with an enemy behind you when you reach the top. There’s also a weirdness with the visual design of the game – it’s somewhere between neon-punk and Western design. That connection does make the visuals hard to read at times, particularly when enemies are in buildings.
You’ll see explosive barrels with blinking neon pink lights or outhouses lined with neon blues or greens. Many of the buildings have neon borders with black interiors. Finding enemies when they run indoors can mean you get shot more than you’d hoped. Wild Bastards has a Borderlands-esque cel-shaded style, but sets itself apart by leaning heavily into the Western vibe.
Visually, I really enjoyed the style of the game. The voice acting and script really lean into the western vibe. Every character is fully voiced, and the actors play up the hammy Western script. Everyone is a varmint, everything’s crawlin’ with critters and every high noon is a perfect time for a shootout.
It’s a rootin’ tootin’ good time if that’s your flavour of bootleg gin.
Getting The Band Back Together
At first, you’ll have two of the Wild Bastards in your posse: the Shotgun-wielding Casino and the dual-pistol Spider Rosa. These two are good, but they emphasise the simplicity of the character design. Each character has a ranged weapon and a special ability. For Casino, it’s a roulette ability that randomly kills one enemy on the current map. Spider Rosa, however, throws out a decoy that draws enemies to attack it. This can lead to some great ambush moments. You toss the decoy into a Saloon and wait behind the bar. Then, you shoot enemies as they come into the room.
Just as you start to get bored of these characters, you’ll meet Smokey, a bounty hunter with a Ghostrider flaming skull for a face. He fires a flaming finger gun that lobs fireballs that do damage over time. You’ll then unlock The Judge – an executioner robot with a single-shot rifle. His gun will keep track of your kills by creating miniature gallows on top of the gun. After three kills your next one will be an instant kill.
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Bastard Combos
When you beam down to a planet, you’ll be able to take a combination of Bastards with you, and they’ll appear in teams of two. In the later levels, you can have multiple squads running around the planet map picking up items and battling posses. In Showdowns, you’ll have your two Bastards to switch between at the click of a button.
There’s some great synergy between some and it’s exciting to work out which ones work best together. For example, one long-ranged and one close-quarters like Hopalong — he’s a snake mutant with a lasso and he can stun enemies. Pair him with Preach. She’s a God-fearing preacher with a minigun. It takes a bit to spin up, but when it does you’ll turn most enemies into swiss cheese.
Around the Campfire
The various Bastards have interpersonal relationships. These relationships determine who you can and can’t take on a mission together. These evolve. For example, when you drop into a level there’s a chance that one of your team might get ‘Scattered’ and miss the drop zone; you’ll be flying solo until you go and pick them up. You can complete the level without them, but it might cause those two characters to have a feud, so they won’t be in the same posse together — this forces you to mix up the teams and try new combinations.
You’ll also have members randomly develop feuds with one another. This happens just to throw a stick in the works from time to time.
Contrasting this, characters can become pals. When they’re paired together, the non-active character will sometimes fire off their special ability unprompted, to help out the situation. This can be a real godsend and saved my bacon more than once.
Straight Shootin’
There’s a good deal of longevity and variety to a run. Each galaxy map and planet map are randomly generated each time you restart – which you’ll do if your whole posse is wiped out.
There’s a good balance of curveballs that constantly make you rejig your party and plans. This includes particular enemy types. Mobs of fast Cyotes are best dealt with using Casino’s shotgun. Some levels have heaps of snipers. For those, you might need Hopalong’s mobility or The Judge’s range.
There are 10 Bastards to unlock over your quest, and when you reach the end there is a challenge run mode to keep replaying.
Throughout your adventure, you’ll collect items and level up your posse which can change the way everyone plays. I found items that gave me a rocket boost jump, which was perfect for raining hellfire down on enemies as Smokey, another gave increased clip size, which was great for the otherwise one-shot Judge.
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Australian development teams have been making their mark on the global stage in recent years with knock-outs like Hollow Knight, Untitled Goose Game and Cult of the Lamb. While Wild Bastards doesn’t quite reach those lofty goals, it does provide a unique and easy-to-grasp shooter with plenty of replayability and a rootin-tootin lineup of characters.
If you want a replayable old-world shooter with a bit of strategy overlaid on top, then this might just be a great way to while away an afternoon.
Wild Bastards is out now on Nintendo Switch, PC via Steam, Xbox and PlayStation and retails for around $50 AUD.
Quest Daily scores Wild Bastards:
7/10
A copy of WIld Bastards was supplied to Quest Daily for the purpose of this review.
