Wild Bastards
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Critic Reviews for Wild Bastards
A sort of successor to 2019's Void Bastards, Blue Manchu's Wild Bastards is a roguelike Wild West shooter that's a tad too ambitious for its own good.
The roguelike and FPS genres haven't been spliced so successfully since Deathloop-and Wild Bastards deserves just as much acclaim.
The novelty of a 13-character cast is a solid hook for Wild Bastards, but a myriad of streamlined and sidelined elements compromise its potential to the point of becoming a trip to outer space that you won't remember for long after hitting credits.
Blue Manchu's spiritual successor to Void Bastards is every bit as complex, challenging, and rewarding as that earlier gem.
Blue Manchu delivered the goods with Void Bastards, but this follow-up is a disappointing effort that can't match its predecessor's atmosphere, charm, originality or strategic smarts. Instead, Wild Bastards is a strangely bland affair, melding boring top-down decision-making and dull first-person sections. The game never really picks up the pace or gives you anything surprising to work with. In a genre packed full of bangers, this one is pretty difficult to recommend on any level.
In an Autumn release schedule of sequels, hero shooters, and the latest slightly different iteration of a long-running franchise; the uniqueness of Wild Bastards resolutely stands out. This innovative, bonkers, daring, and entirely brilliant genre-hybrid absolutely demands your attention.
Wild Bastards has a lot of charm and style, and that’s enough of a hook to want to dive in and see what the game has to offer. Using a sizable roster of characters who are the major differentiators for gameplay as the main motivator to keep going is effective as well. But once you’ve got the Bastards roster filled out and you have combat figured out well enough, that’s about where the buck stops in this sci-fi western. It’s a chaotic and challenging experience, but promises a lot of complexity and nuance that seems bountiful at first, but fizzles a bit given time. Some balancing issues hold it back the most from being truly fulfilling, but there’s a little bit of genre fatigue talking on my part as well. On its own merits, Wild Bastards is ambitious and kinetic, and will definitely put FPS fans’ skills to the test.
Wild Bastards is a roguelite first-person shooter that presents itself to players in a superb and very pleasant way, while not innovating the formula and perhaps not deepening the bonds between the main protagonists too significantly. However, this allows you to overcome strategic situations to have an approach that deals with situations brilliantly, composing teams that are always different... Unless someone, in short, is angry with someone else. Which happens. The game design is very pleasant and detailed, also enriched by a nice gunplay system. Recommended for those who love the West, popcorn and Tarantino.
Review in Italian | Read full review
