Gunman Tales Review | TheXboxHub

What do you consider after we say the phrases ‘Wild West’? Bonus factors if you happen to considered wicky-wicky-wah-wah Will Smith and mechanical spiders. However what you in all probability considered was final stands, duels, gunfights on horseback, panning for gold, claiming bounties on outlaws, ingesting moonshine within the native saloon and enormous, open desert expanses. 

Credit score to Gunman Tales for being a £6.99 indie recreation from Ratalaika Video games, however by some means crowbarring in each one final a type of issues. We thought Gunman Tales could be a easy Wild Gunman replace: a lightgun recreation dragged into the twenty first Century. However it’s truly way more bold, packing all of that and extra into its tiny knapsack. 

It takes some work to elucidate. Attempt to think about the Wild West on a recreation board, along with your cowboy hat as certainly one of 4 items on that board. You and your opponents (CPU or human, taking turns on-line or domestically) take turns to maneuver these items to a location upon which – primarily – certainly one of three issues occur. You enter a location and set off no matter that location has to supply; you participate in a large-scale gunfight; otherwise you compete in a duel with one of many three different gamers on the board. 

Your intention with all this wandering about is to gather 4 map items, gained randomly from the gunfights or stolen from different gamers in duels. With all 4 map items in hand, you possibly can head to the golden canyon within the centre of the map and enter the endgame: a three-staged boss battle with a form of hulking totem pole. Full that and also you’re the winner, capable of raid a trinket from the totem pole’s horde.

That’s an outline of the zoomed-out components of the sport, however we might spend the entire assessment speaking about its numerous nooks and crannies. As a result of a lot can occur on that recreation board, it’s ridiculous. In your flip you possibly can drop into numerous cities, Native American camps, mines and watering holes and set off minigames and facilities. Take the cities, for instance: inside them, you possibly can play a horse-riding minigame the place you attempt to take out a bounty; you possibly can play higher-or-lower for exhausting money within the saloon; you possibly can spend money on weapons; and you should purchase up some well being boosts. However that’s simply one of many many areas. You possibly can combat werewolves, commerce with the Native Individuals, dig for gold and extra, relying on the objects you gained from gunfights. 

We saved discovering new stuff to do inside Gunman Tales, proper till the time we put down the pad and began reviewing. Whereas a variety of that’s to do with the depth of choices right here, it’s additionally all the way down to one of many worst tutorials we’ve encountered in residing reminiscence. We’re tempted to jot down a second article which truly outlines what it’s important to do in Gunman Tales. The 2 tutorial screens are about one million miles from helpful.

The true meat of the sport is within the gunfights. These are little pink nodes on the map, they usually’ll be what you hunt round for within the opening moments. They’re in all probability finest described as a light-gun recreation the place your primary character additionally occurs to be onscreen. So, you’re sliding the reticule across the display screen, popping cowboys and Native Individuals, whereas additionally managing the security of your character within the foreground of the display screen. It’s a little bit of multi-tasking: are you able to pull off headshots whereas dodging sticks of dynamite? 

Apparent criticism is clear: a lightgun recreation and not using a lightgun is all the time going to really feel janky. We don’t wish to be sitting down at Time Disaster with a controller, we wish to be popping our head up from the couch with a plastic gun peripheral. And that’s the abiding suggestions for Gunman Tales’ gunplay sections: it will possibly really feel such as you’re dragging a heavy reticule across the display screen. We will surely advocate that you just improve the sensitivity of the cursor within the recreation’s menus. 

By supplying you with management of your individual character, you might be a minimum of doing one thing that’s made for the pad. Dodging, when you are additionally firing, is initially a problem, primarily as a result of the sport does such a poor job of explaining the controls. However when you be taught that the barrel-roll, pulled off with a LT and directional button, is mainly a win-button, then it turns into much less of a problem. It not solely will get you out of the best way, however swallows up the projectiles such as you had been a gelatinous blob. 

It’s the power-ups that make the fight extra palatable. Shoot the chickens they usually explode in a puff of feathers and a power-up rolls down the display screen. These are nice enjoyable, inflicting stampedes throughout the display screen, changing all of the enemies into chickens, or handing you a chaingun. They usually make quick work of your opponents, and enliven gameplay that would have been deathly in its repetitiveness. 

The much less stated in regards to the duels, although, the higher. These set off everytime you encounter an opponent on the board, and in opposition to CPUs they’re an utter enigma. We’re but to win a single certainly one of them, for the reason that pc has close to instantaneous reflexes. So, we handled different gamers as hazards to keep away from: allow them to kill one another, quite than you, after which choose up the loot from their corpses, just like the true cowards that we’re. 

We discovered Gunman Tales to be totally fascinating. It was nothing like the sport that we anticipated. We ready ourselves to assessment a Duck Hunt-like lightgun recreation, ported to a console that didn’t have a lightgun. Don’t get us unsuitable, that’s in there, nevertheless it’s supported by a lot extra: loads of minigames, duelling, horse-fights, a roguelike construction and all performed on a Wild West recreation board. There’s not very like it, and it rolled in like a contemporary breeze. Lots of the enjoyable in Gunman Tales is heading in a path and seeing what’s there.

However whereas Gunman Tales is overflowing with concepts, there’s no denying that the central one is creaky. The lightgun stuff is neither enjoyable nor notably assorted, and including in some character motion isn’t sufficient. As soon as we’d discovered the Golden Canyon and claimed our treasure, we didn’t have the impulse to return. We simply rode off into the sundown.

You should purchase Gunman Tales from the Xbox Retailer