I spent nearly the entire weekend playing Wild Bastards, a roguelike first-person shooter with some strategic elements sprinkled in. I had other things to do, and other things I had meant to do, like take my kids out, cut a tree down, wash my car, loads of stuff, but I did none of it, because I ended up playing Wild Bastards nearly the whole damn time.
If you played Void Bastards--the previous game from developers Blue Manchu, who by all accounts and despite their naming habits are lovely, and not bastards at all--you'll know a lot about what's up here. If not, just know that this is a bite-sized shooter where every shot you take is life-or-death. Large portions feel like FTL and smaller portions feel like Lucasarts' 1997 classic Outlaws.
Taking command of a gang of space cowboys, nearly all of whom are dead at the beginning of the game (and all of whom are cool as hell), your job is to scour the galaxy bringing each member back to life en route to reaching the fabled 'Homestead'. The crew chat between missions (and during them), have relationships you need to juggle and, most importantly, each have their own unique weapons and skills to bring to the shooting sections of the game.
Which you absolutely need to make note of, because Wild Bastards involves beaming teams of shooters down to the surface of planets and moving around a board game-like map, picking up perks, going shopping and fighting bad guys. When a fight is triggered, you jump from map view to FPS view, albeit very briefly; often you'll only have a handful of enemies to dispose of, and stages can last just seconds.
Which sounds quick and easy, and most of the time, it is! The catch is that you can only control two of your crew in a battle at a time. Remember how I said everyone has unique weapons and abilities? So do the dozens of different bad guys, so one space cowboy's weapon might be priceless in one fight and almost useless in the next.
Wild Bastards hits every roguelike note it plays perfectly. You always feel in peril but never overwhelmed. There are always options available to you but you don't always get to use them. Sometimes you get to play as your favourite cowboy on your favourite type of stage and it's great! Other times people get hurt and tired, forcing you to use your least-favourite crew members, and you just need to make do.
What really makes it sing is the balance between all these disparate sections of the game. Normally I play these kinds of fragmented games in short bursts, a level or two then I'm out, but here one shootout blurred into another, the lure of fresh loot, cans of beans and new heroes to unlock keeping me going for hours at a time. The tension of the brief shootout levels--where damage can persist across whole planets--really does make them feel like...shootouts, where every shot counts and you've gotta be quick on the draw.
You know that joy you feel when a game you love is frictionless? When one idea blends into another, one system interlocks as perfectly with another as a Swiss watch, and you find yourself simply gliding through an entire video game? Wild Bastards made me feel that. I can talk about its parts all day, they're all good, but the real juice here is the sum of them.Â
