Gaming: This Co-op Fps Steam Demo Feels Poised To Do For Spellslinging...
Far Far West's frantic gunfights earn a hearty yeehaw from me.
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Far Far West sounds like videogame premise Mad Libs: You play as a posse of gunslinging cowboy wizards who deploy from a flying train to complete randomized missions with objectives like firing a nuclear missile at a giant spectral necromancer while blasting ranks of skeletons.
It's a shooter imagined through free association, but Far Far West's demo in Steam's latest Next Fest event is a promising sampler of frantic, satisfying FPS gunfights that feel like they have the potential to stand in the same league as co-op heavy hitters like Deep Rock Galactic.
Far Far West follows a similar rhythm to Deep Rock: In place of an orbital space station, your hub is a ramshackle Western town populated by robot pistoleros where you can tinker with unlockable character upgrades, gun loadouts, and spell selections (the robot cowboys are also wizards). Deploying on missions is a matter of choosing between pairings of initial objectives and boss encounters that close out the run; you might be asked to fire an artillery cannon before having a shootout with an evil locomotive, or take a bounty to fire one of the aforementioned nuclear missiles.
Once the hovertrain drops you and your fellow galvanized gunfighters into your procedurally-generated cowboy quest, things assume more of a Helldivers 2 mode. Your core mission tasks are marked on your map, but moseying between them will see you stumble across optional side objectives, treasure chests, and mining outcrops that can provide upgrade currency to spend back at town.
And, of course, you'll be shooting a lot of skeletons and hostile robot bandits along the way. I'll admit I'm unclear on what's motivating the skeleton-robot hostilities, but the gunplay feels good enough to overlook the geopolitical context. The basic acts of aiming, shooting, and reloading have a really pleasant fluidity in Far Far West, and the animation and sound design of its stylized shooting irons provide rewarding pings of audiovisual feedback.
Meanwhile, firing off my chosen set of spells at choice moments felt punchy enough to justify their cooldowns. Between punctuating gunfire with columns of lightning or a well-timed fireball and keeping up constant movement to avoid being surrounded by the enemies flooding in from all sides, Far Far West delivered firefights with a satisfying mob
Source: PC Gamer
