Wild Bastards Review

Void Bastards asked you to forget everything you knew about first-person shooters. It tested you with strategic planning across narrow hallways full of aliens intent on eating your assand an abundance of traps and tricks awaiting you at every turn. It was a marvellous breath of fresh air, devilishly humorous and aesthetically unique in a space crammed full of military shooters and gritty sci-fi spectacles. The Aussie and Canadian outfit Blu Manchu are now back to take those lessons learnt in space and translate them to the wild west … in space. I guess they like space, can’t say I blame them.

Wild Bastards establishes its randomised intergalactic crusade in a similar vein to its predecessor, interchanging prisoners with a rag-tag group of beset outlaws. Two survivors of the group are on the run from the Puritanical Magnate Jebediah Chaste, having seen their fellow members taken down. With nowhere else to run, they suddenly find themselves teleported onto the Drifter, a sentient spaceship with a plan to venture to the safe space of the Homestead. Cue a series of procedurally-generated galactic sectors your posse must venture through, each with a series of challenging planets to survive and thrive on.

Void Bastards played with a lot of cool, clever mechanics, little things that made you think and take your time across each encounter. Every ship you encountered threw spanners in the works, from different enemies to awkward hazards such as poisoned airways or turrets galore. You could never go in all guns blazing, having to plan your route and place priority on what you wanted to achieve, from finding treasures to simply ensuring you get back alive with more health for the next challenge. Here, many such ideas make a welcome return, though with some new and fresh spins.

Sectors split the path forward, giving you plenty of options

Each sector features an assortment of locations you can fly to, with their own random challenges to partake in. Early on you’ll depart down to the surface of a planet with your two surviving members, where another random set of encounters await. Treasures are clearly marked on the map, along with shops, health pickups, and roadblocks full of enemies. The only way to proceed is fighting through whoever awaits, collecting any items of worth before finding the teleport back to the ship in orbit.

Get through to the end of a sector and you’ll have a chance to rescue a downed member of the Bastards, who will join your crew aboard the Drifter if the mission is a success. Fail, and you’ll be brought back to the start of the sector to try over again. Any items you didn’t use prior to warping are lost forever, whether you proceed forward to the next sector or go back to try again, though you’ll have the chance to permanently level up each of your Bastards using Aces, upgrading their key stats or abilities in the process.

Enemy encounters are your first-person experiences, and here’s where Wild Bastards shines brightest. Tense shoot-outs will test your patience and timing, though you can just as easily run in and gamble with some up-close fights if you prefer. Wild Bastards doesn’t punish you for your play style, though later encounters with larger, armour-clad villains, turrets that react to your movement, and robot dogs that will chase you down can turn any kind of strategy upside-down very quickly if you’re not careful. There are a handful of items scattered around every map that provide armour and health, along with one-off special moves for each character. These powerful extra talents can change the tide, so it’s worth gathering and using them as often as possible.

Shoot him! Shoot him!

Every member of the Bastards, of which there are 13 in total, brings with them a variety of distinctive combat mechanics. It’s up to you to decide how best to make use of each character, pairing two together for every encounter which you can switch between at will. I often found myself running one Bastard for in-your-face moments and another for sneaky sniping, swapping quickly between both whenever the situation demanded it. It’s a satisfying cycle of control, dropping a couple of rascals from afar before jumping into the fray to finish off the remainder. It feels even better when you’re clearly outgunned, and always outnumbered, but fight out of a jam in style.

There are so many intricate layers to the Wild Bastards onion, little things across every portion of sector exploration, character and inventory management, and world building, but it never feels excessive. Each piece of the puzzle keeps you thinking, makes you question whether to gamble down the harder path to the goal for richer rewards or play it safe to ensure another hero joins your cause. There’s a tinge of frustration if you fail, having to lose your temporary items when warped back to the start, but that made me personally more determined. I had that same feeling with Void Bastards, the failures driving me to learn and improve, and here it’s just as alluring to try again.

Each member of the Bastards can, depending on your success on each map, either become closer friends with teammates or angered rivals. A closer bond can result in your crewmate jumping in to aid you (such as dropping healing items or hindering enemies), but a rival means you can’t take both bots down with you to the surface. The only way you can solve such a crisis is over a delicious can of beans, which I think is a subtle reference to Blazing Saddles, though you’re blowing off angry vibes instead of gas in this case. You’ll find cans of beans randomly on each map, and it pays to pick them up, since these rival moments can happen randomly too.

Roadblocks are unavoidable but fun encounters

When the shit does hit the fan, there’s enough variety in your troop that blasting your way through isn’t too difficult, though there are a few things that dig bug me. For one, climbing ladders can leave you open to attacks given you’re always facing said ladder when you ‘teleport’ up or down it. It’s a small thing, but the number of times I slowly turned around only to find someone waiting to shoot me in the back at the top frustrated me to no end. You also have a few turns per map before a more dangerous boss will teleport down to chase you around, and unless you’re not keeping closer tabs on those events, you can easily become trapped in a corner with no choice but to take on these far harder foes. Unless you’re extremely lucky, which I was on occasion, you’ll be beaten down far too easily and sent scurrying.

Wild Bastards’ visual style follows on from Void Bastards, with sharp neon lines interspersed between cartoon inspired character models and environments. There’s a greater level of colour here though, green fields and dusty red ranges add some generous shades to the established formula. But what appeals to me more, from both a presentation and gameplay standpoint, is the use of audio to emphasise character movement. When you jump into combat, you’ll hear the enemy call out to each other as they try to hunt you down, giving away their position in the process. Dumb on their part, but smart from a gameplay perspective as it provides an easier way to find your prey amongst the buildings and trees, accentuated by their footsteps as they try to get a better vantage point. Your own position can be given away if you sprint from one spot to another, so it pays sometimes to sneak around, to use those audio cues to your advantage and catch the idiots napping. I don’t often say this, but you’d be wise to play Wild Bastards with a headset as it’s way more fun hearing every little beat.

Final Thoughts

Like its predecessor, Wild Bastards revels in originality. There’s so much attention to detail, so many intricate pieces to the strategy puzzle, and they all come together fittingly. The shoot-outs are an absolute blast too, bite-sized firefights that will punish you for using the wrong strategy but are super satisfying to master. Your time here will vary depending on your level of success (and difficulty level), though you’ll unlock a challenge mode once the credits roll for an extra tough dose of entertainment that rounds out the package rather well. All told, it’s another total banger from the Aussie/Canadian team that’s brimming with creativity from every corner of its rootin’ tootin’ adventure. Look, I had to get one Wild West quote in, okay? Just go play Wild Bastards!

Reviewed on PC // Review code supplied by publisher

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