As a seasoned gamer with over two decades under my belt, I’ve played through countless titles that left me feeling underwhelmed or frustrated. But Wild Bastards, oh boy, this game is an exception! It’s like Blue Manchu took all the elements I love in gaming and mashed them together into a beautifully chaotic symphony of strategy-shooter brilliance.
As a dedicated gamer, I must confess that I’ve been immersed in countless roguelites over the past few years. The indie scene has been abuzz with this genre, especially since creating intricate systems can be more cost-effective than building elaborate environments and set pieces. Even though roguelites come in a myriad of forms, I’m still not tired of them. Maybe someday, the thrill will wane, but if games like Wild Bastards keep pushing boundaries, I doubt I’ll ever tire of this genre.
Wild Bastards hails from Blue Manchu, the team behind Void Bastards released in 2019. Similar to their previous work, Wild Bastards combines elements of strategy and shooting games within a roguelike structure. While Void Bastards bore resemblance to games such as BioShock and System Shock 2, it’s challenging to find similarities for Wild Bastards. This unique game offers an intriguing mix of arena shooter mechanics, turn-based strategy elements, and even a touch of single-player hero shooter action, all rolled into one.
In “Wild Bastards,” a fascinating blend of sci-fi and western genres is presented, carrying forward the witty humor that characterized their previous work. You’ll traverse procedurally generated galaxies in search of assembling your team against insurmountable odds. The game’s primary villain has already claimed the lives of thirteen outlaws, but you have the power to revive them and reunite the legendary Wild Bastards gang.
This process is broken down into several complex stages: Initially, you’ll find yourself on a global map where you get to select the planets you wish to visit during your journey to reach your ally at the end of this chain. This decision requires careful thought because it may offer you shorter or easier paths to your objective, depending on the route you choose. Some planets might be rich in treasure such as weapon upgrades, quick-travel markers, and items that either resolve grudges or foster friendships among your team, but they could also be inhabited by stronger or more abundant enemies, and face harsh conditions like storms or impassable snow.
Looking down from a cosmic perspective, you can catch a glimpse – not a detailed image – of what each planet holds in store for you. This initial stage sets off Void Bastards’ ongoing series of tests, where it consistently pushes you to plan ahead and remain vigilant about your resources, lest a run ends when all your team members are simultaneously wiped out.
In this game, you are required to touch down on every planet you encounter, which triggers the turn-based mechanics of the game. The planets serve as a board-like map filled with adversaries, perilous creatures, and valuable prizes that you seek. Each map may contain between one and approximately ten high-value items such as skills for your team, enhancements for their weapons, and most significantly, new team members themselves. Throughout the game, the main objective is to form a complete 13-member squad, so a successful run results in adding a new character to your roster. It’s rare to collect them all without losing any team members, but if you’re feeling adventurous, there’s an ironman mode that invites you to try and do just that.
Upon landing on a planet, all its routes become clear to you, unlike the vague space travel guide filled with hidden secrets. However, even without any concealed areas at this moment, things only grow more intricate. Each planet permits between one and four outlaws to accompany you on your mission, functioning somewhat like pre-selected, dynamic weapons for combat. During the strategic map phases, you won’t sustain injuries, but making poor decisions can still lead to an extremely challenging mission by causing significant distress within your crew and making a successful run highly unlikely.
Given that each move carries significant importance, what’s the optimal strategy when you have extra moves per turn but know an enemy boss will appear in five turns and collecting all high-value items requires about 40 steps? Should you calculate the quickest route through the terrain, even if it increases encounters with enemies? Or perhaps you should take advantage of helpful planetary features like teleporters for quick escapes after picking up power-ups or cash? Alternatively, do you skip everything and rush to the exit tile since this planet is merely a stepping stone on your quest for valuable loot on another planet?
During the 20-hour journey of the game, numerous factors – likely over a dozen – made me ponder on each planet. The charm lay in the fact that there was no single correct response; only choices that ranged from easy to challenging. It was my responsibility to determine when to call it quits, and the outcome would reveal whether I had made the right or wrong decision based on my escape plan. Accompanied by a robot sheriff, an alien resembling a spider, a fireball personified as an anthropomorphic being, and more, I had the freedom to roam about and discover.
Every time you arrive at a space with enemies present (or they arrive on your space), you progress to the final phase of the game’s three-part gameplay sequence, which involves an intense shootout. This transition transforms the game from a turn-based board game into conventional first-person shooter action, taking place on randomly generated levels that blend elements of Quake and Overwatch. Each level features an arena-style design with various high and low vantage points, hazardous environments, some destructible components (although it was often unclear which areas could be destroyed throughout most of the game), and numerous adversaries to vanquish before you can flee and rejoin the turn-based planet map.
Regardless of which out of the 13 unique characters you’ve chosen to accompany you, the precision of the gunplay remains consistently accurate in this game. Similar to Void Bastards, I appreciate the unique charm of the game’s 2D objects within a 3D environment, as it makes aiming feel incredibly precise and dependable. This could be due to the clear, distinct lines and color contrasts that help me easily identify my target compared to the more blurred, indistinct targets in games like Call of Duty where everything tends to blend together – military uniforms, natural foliage colors, and likely explosions. The game’s artwork not only looks visually appealing with its stylish design, but it also enhances an already enjoyable gaming experience on both controllers and mouse-keyboard setups.
I appreciate how dependable those mechanics are since they make every one of the 13 playable characters, who function as hero-shooter characters ideal for solo gaming, such a joy to utilize. Each character is unique from the others. They all possess their own weapon, voice, background story, and can form relationships with other outlaws that affect the group’s dynamics in various ways, such as befriending someone who will boost your abilities during confrontations or causing trouble that prevents you from working together on missions until the conflict is resolved. You’ll likely find yourself favoring certain characters–my picks were an alien with excellent jumping skills and a ray gun, a mechanized horse with advanced targeting, and a card dealer armed with a powerful double-barrel shotgun–but there isn’t a single outlaw in the bunch that’s not worth using.
Each member of the gang exhibits diverse strategies for ranged attacks, catering to different gameplay styles. For instance, Hopalong is a swift-moving python, capable of navigating the map quickly to outmaneuver opponents, lasso them from behind and strangle them at close quarters. The Judge represents a tank character, armed with a rifle that requires time to reload but excels in delivering powerful critical shots. Lastly, Kaboom is a ball of chatty pink mist, able to heave dynamite over enemy fortifications or through open windows where enemies are taking cover.
Due to the unique abilities of each character, you’ll often find yourself favoring certain groups for missions, such as employing Fletch’s bow that transforms foes into allies, thus building a legion of good guys to confront an approaching boss alongside Sarge, a horse with exceptional long-range enemy detection skills, ensuring they can’t sneak up from behind. Once you’ve transformed a dozen adversaries into allies and the boss becomes hard to miss, it evokes the thrill of a Marvel film climax when all heroes charge the enemy with grandeur.
The social dynamics within this game might be somewhat confusing, but they enable the formation of friendships or rivalries between various outlaws. If a rivalry arises (as often happens due to scripted story events designed to create conflict in your team), you’ll find yourself managing these disputes much like handling squabbling siblings. They won’t be able to travel together to a planet, so you’ll need to keep them apart until they resolve their issues, which could happen through some shared interaction or resolution, much like them working out their disagreements over a can of beans.
When friendships develop, these allies will offer additional assistance to their companions, such as a hero dispatching a pack of robotic “coyotes” with you before embarking on a quest. I found this system intriguing in both directions, but it was often unclear to me how I influenced it beyond preparing beans to quickly forge connections or mend relationships. After missions, when these results appeared, I couldn’t understand why, and it seemed somewhat random except during the pre-scripted narrative events.
Each character can be individually customized for specific playstyles, such as transforming Preach, who carries a gatling gun, into a bloodsucker that drains health, or enhancing The Judge’s tank-like characteristics by adding multiple layers of armor that safeguard his HP throughout numerous battles if played cautiously. Enhancing them using cards found on different planets, monitoring their stamina, and ensuring they stay above 0 HP (or healing them when they drop below) adds depth to an already intricate system, and each character brings a fresh, exciting element to your strategy and routine.
In every confrontation, it feels like an array of villains from the game’s vast roster surround me, attacking from various angles. This forces me to juggle a swarm of enemies, as the number and types can change dramatically. Instantaneously swapping between my chosen characters is akin to selecting weapons, except instead of changing tools, I’m exchanging one character for another in a snap. This quick-switching mechanic keeps the action fast-paced, although the specific enemies I face can make it more of a grueling, intense battle, or a chaotic free-for-all. At times, I find myself hurling dynamite into the enemy ranks, hoping for a lucky strike that will clear a path. Regardless of its composition, each confrontation is thrilling and adds to my overall enjoyment of the game.
Knowing when to grab a level’s pick-ups–should it have any–is yet another consideration. One of my favorite details is how Casino’s ability will randomly kill only but always exactly one enemy in the showdown. If you pick up that item in a boss battle and save it for when only the boss remains, you can kill them with the simple press of a button. Where other games may restrict you from trying such a smart maneuver and force you to take on the boss with other means, Wild Bastards rewards you for being so savvy.
Mastering the intricate aspects of the game keeps you on your toes with constant excitement. Navigating the intricate network of interconnected systems offers a deeply satisfying sense of accomplishment when you finally find the best path. I was confident that I could overcome any situation if only I played each one skillfully, and that feeling of control was always within my reach. My downfall, however, often lay in execution.
After experiencing several setbacks, I began to perceive the game’s strategies more clearly, recognizing my errors such as lingering too long on a planet or acting overconfident in battles that ended abruptly with a one-hit kill. However, I never felt the game was unfairly stacked against me. Each time I grasped a new mechanic or found my rhythm, there were additional complexities to challenge me, but they always felt fair and didn’t seem designed just to prolong gameplay. A few narrative events required me to delve into lesser-used characters, and upon overcoming that hurdle, I emerged feeling battered yet resilient, having grown from the experience.
In this game, you’re constantly on the hunt for special items and essential resources, traversing a bustling, dangerous planet to find them. After that, you engage in intense first-person shootouts against various types of enemies, which makes every few minutes feel like a thrilling combination of a strategic chess game and an action-packed movie.
As a gamer, I can’t help but be drawn in by this game’s captivating visual style, but what truly sets it apart is its clever, understated humor. You might not expect much dialogue from a game that’s not primarily story-driven, but the characters in my team have a rich history that unfolds as you progress through successful runs. Their personalities are rich and vivid, but the real standouts are the enemies – they’re just hilarious! My favorite foes are the Hunters, who speak with British accents and twist common video game phrases into elaborate, over-the-top versions. Instead of asking their buddies about my location, they shout “Who perceives the hideous foe?” and instead of saying “I’m flanking!”, they yell “Perhaps a change of scenery!” It’s quite odd, but I found myself laughing out loud at these villains frequently. At times, I even kept them alive longer just to hear more of their amusing voice lines.
If there’s one area where the game might fall short, it’s the ending. The final stages, which are randomly generated, certainly increase the challenge in a balanced way, but I was hoping for something more spectacular to wrap up my adventure. Ideally, I could have engaged in an epic confrontation involving more of my characters or spread across multiple intense battles to decide the outcome of my playthrough. It seems that the game’s mechanics don’t support this, which makes sense. However, in its place, the final act feels much like the preceding ones, lacking a sense of climax. Despite this, it remains an incredibly engaging strategy-shooter combination, but story-wise, it concludes in an underwhelming manner.
Despite the final hour not offering anything new, Wild Bastards had previously tested their limits numerous times. Moreover, for those truly dedicated players, additional game modes become accessible upon completion, some of which introduce even more variables to a run, complementing the game’s challenging difficulty settings that can either make these systems simpler or more demanding.
In two consecutive games, Blue Manchu has once again left me spellbound by their ability to design complex, interconnected gameplay mechanics that demand both strategic planning and spontaneous skill. This captivating game, Wild Bastards, boasts a diverse ensemble of 13 distinct characters, offers precise shooting mechanics, showcases an impressive aesthetic and humorous tone, and presents numerous opportunities for exploration in each phase of its three-part cycle. In essence, Wild Bastards is nothing short of a masterfully crafted masterpiece.
Read More
- The Last Epoch Dilemma: Confronting the Gold Dupe Crisis
- Finding Resources in Palworld: Tips from the Community
- UFO PREDICTION. UFO cryptocurrency
- AAVE PREDICTION. AAVE cryptocurrency
- BONE PREDICTION. BONE cryptocurrency
- OKB PREDICTION. OKB cryptocurrency
- EUR HKD PREDICTION
- Uncovering the Mystery of Red King Players in Clash Royale – What Reddit Users Have to Say
- Abiotic Factor: Players Discuss the Need for Quick Character Adjustments in-game
- Skull and Bones: Gamers’ Frustrations with Ubisoft’s Premium Content Delivery
2024-09-13 00:09