There are cold opens and there are freezing ones. Sci-fi roguelike shooter Wild Bastards doesn’t start on its strongest cowboy boot. You are dumped into the middle of an interstellar chase and summarily shown the ropes. The guns feel simplistic, the arenas bare, the loot vanilla, and the entire loop of beaming down to a planet and getting into small-scale “showdowns” threatens to become stale within the first hour or so. But then you find an outlaw buddy who offers a new way to shoot human dirtbags. Then another fellow bandit. And another. By the time your spaceship is half-filled with scoundrels and weirdoes shouting at each other, the game has warmed up enough to reveal its central idea. This ain’t no grand FPS campaign, nor is it quick as roguelikes go. It’s a snacky shootout sim with tumbleweed towns that feels best when you savour the pre-fight suspense.
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