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 mobility and combat cadence that could feel downright Destinyish—one of the best compliments I could give a shooter.
There are some screws that could easily be tightened ahead of a full launch; for example, the default primary weapon—a quad-cylindered slug thrower serving as a Wild West stand-in for an assault rifle—regularly tosses bullets far afield of the target, even when shots seem like they should be guaranteed hits. But that just gave me more reason to switch to my revolver, which is the reliable workhorse you’d hope for when you’re playing cowboy.
Otherwise, I left the demo with only one real complaint: Far Far West’s idea of humor is recognizing a thing from a thing. The hub town’s locals feature referential gags like a robot reenacting the Last Airbender “my cabbages” bit and a Bull-themed bounty hunter who insists that “WE MUST STONKS.” Because he’s a bull, you see. Like how the stock market is sometimes.
And then there’s the robot horseman with the Steam logo for a head, who declares that “by decree of Gabe Newbot, I ride town to town with one request: leave the game a review on Steam!” I know it’s tough to get noticed on Steam nowadays, but you can just give me a button that sends me to the reviews if you need to. It’s cool.
So, yes, it can be a little groanworthy, but that’s easy enough to ignore—and it certainly doesn’t seem like it’s dampened the demo’s reception. At time of writing, the demo’s sitting at an Overwhelmingly Positive rating with over 1,900 reviews. It’s a promising showing from the seven-person team at developer Evil Raptor, and it’s well worth giving a try.
Far Far West is launching on Steam later this year. You can download the demo now.
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