Sometimes, when you want a food metaphor for a video game, you reach for a comparison to fine dining. Other times you might allude toward fast food. In this instance, my trite and overused analogy is a great big buffet offering of all your favorite foods, where you just grab handfuls of everything and stuff it in until youâre sick. That, in the best way possible, is Wild Bastards
Ostensibly a follow-up to developer Blue Manchuâs 2019 game Void Bastards, but defiantly not a sequel, Wild Bastards is a large part old-school FPS action, with a hefty helping of Slay The Spire, and then embellished with tactical strategy. It mimics the behavior of a thousand rogue-lites, but certainly isnât one, throwing you into super-difficult first-person action sequences that last only a minute or two each and encouraging you to carefully craft elaborate teams of specifically equipped characters, before undoing all your work between every chapter. And it all absolutely works.
Itâs tempting to spend too long comparing Wild Bastards to its predecessor, putting ticks and crosses next to the aspects it shares and doesnât, but I think this undermines both. And despite the visual similarity, and that both have a branching map of locations leading to FPS-based missions, they are starkly different. So letâs focus on what Wild Bastards is, rather than what it isnât.
You begin the game with two characters, the four-armed, somewhat demonic Spider Rosa, and gambling robot Casino. The pair are attempting to escape the Chaste family of twisted evil cowboy types by fleeing through the galaxy in their spaceship. When beaming down to a (tutorial) planet where the two must make their way across a map to reach a spot that lets them beam back to their craft, one of the Chastes, McNeil, destroys the ship and attempts to capture them. At this point, a legendary ship called Drifter swoops in and rescues them, and forces them on a journey to recover the life forces of former colleagues killed by monstrous patriarch Jebediah Chaste. Which is to say, each chapter of the game is about reaching the end of a small, branching sector of space to collect the DNA of the fallen, then revive them and add them to your crew.
Each point on the sector map you opt to fly to has a planet you must beam down to, and each of these planets has its own map with branching, intersecting locations, points variously filled with pick-ups, stores, and most importantly, battles to win. Each of these battles is a mini-FPS location, where you take on collections of enemies with your crew. Exceptâand bear with me, thereâs a lot of explaining to do hereâyour gang travels a planet in âbunches,â grouped in ones or twos, with no more than four selected for any drop. You can bunch them as you wish, but when youâre battling, only one is fighting at any timeâhowever, you can switch between either in the group on the fly. You then need to make use of your ears (and the gameâs visual representation of sound on the compass) to locate the enemies, whoâll hide but endlessly give themselves away by shouting insults or having conversations with each otherâŠOh god, this game is so much easier to play than to describe.
If a character dies in battle, theyâre dead until you either get back on Drifter and revive them with a rare potion, or if you lose everyone and travel back to the beginning of the sector, or succeed without them and move on to the next sector, whereupon everyone is revived. Except, in both instances, you also lose all the many pieces of equipment youâve won, bought or picked up, and previously assigned among your crew, along with any money, potions, bonus items, orâŠbeans.
Except, or, or, except, but, or, except, and my goodness. Iâve not even gotten into the Ace cards you pick up that permanently improve a character, or the Juice you find in battles that allows each to perform their special ability, or how you want to make sure you pair up a long-range one-shot shooter like furious robot Judge with a more rapid-fire but less precise crewmember like mysterious alien Roswell, and if itâs a drop where only three can go, use Casino and his Juice ability to instantly kill the enemy heâs facing, or ghostly pastor Preach who wields the ludicrously ammo-heavy Sermon .58 and who has no shields but can use Juice to heal when she kills. Oh, but also, if your battle is going to be against a bunch of Critters rather than humanoids, youâd be crazy to use snake-like Hopalong and his laser lasso, but heâd be perfect if itâs just against a couple of heavy Ironclads.
I hope, if somewhat laboriously, Iâve made my point. Wild Bastards is extraordinarily involved, layers upon layers upon layers, with tactics to develop for all its elements. The range of characters is elaborate, eventually offering you 12 to pick from, and even this has added layers of complications, as the wonderfully written and voiced crew will have fallings-out with one another at unscripted points, meaning theyâll refuse to bunch with each other until they make up overâŠa plate of beans. Or they may bond during one of the squillions of conversations that can occur (Iâve never heard the same one twice), and work better together, supporting the other by dropping items into the arena.
Iâve also failed to celebrate the ever-larger menagerie of enemies to battle, an extraordinary 25 humanoids (Chasteners), 11 animals (Critters), and five types of automated security bots, each with unique behaviors, weapons, and defenses. Let alone that each Bastard on your crew moves subtly differently, some faster, some able to jump higher, one slithering rapidly on his belly. Like I say, this game has taken something from every section of the buffet, and somehow fit it all on one delicious plate.
There are, of course, concerns. While the combat is a lot of fun, and even more so for the incredible variety on offer, I do think it lacks punchy impact on hitting enemies. It feels too often like theyâre able to run through your fire unharmed, and thereâs a lack of satisfying oof when you clip them. It makes things feel a little too ethereal.
Wild Bastards
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Back of the box quote
"Space cowboys haven't been this much fun since Firefly."
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Developer
Blue Manchu
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Type of game
FPS / roguelite / strategy
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Platforms
PC, PS5, Xbox Series
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Liked
The mad mishmash of genres all working together, in a game that wants to be won.
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Disliked
Slightly skewed difficulty levels, and overpowered poison.
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Played
Far too much
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Release Date
August 12, 2024
Poison is ludicrously overpowered, and the levels with poison-spitting Rattlers can be miserable to get through until youâve rescued some of the later crew members, the ongoing damage they deal being far too punishing. The other, rather more significant gripe, is that thereâs a missing difficulty sweet spot between Normal and Easy. Normal can be a surprisingly tough choice, especially early on, as the game makes obsessed use of poison as youâre just getting going with two or three characters, and it can feel dispiriting. But Easy is genuinely easy, and lacks enough challenge. (Clearly there are those whoâll excel on Hard and Very Hard, and god bless them.) I wish that Normal were ever-so slightly less punishing at the beginning. I recommend switching back up to it when youâre just breezing through levels, however, because thatâs to miss the point.
The other odd decision is to force you to play through the tutorial every run. Even switched to âOffâ in the menu, the opening level remains required, and itâs pretty tedious when youâre on your third or fourth run (something made far worse for me by my having hammered through the demo of this multiple times earlier this year).
Oh, but if youâre an impatient bugger like me, know that hitting Escape will skip you past the grindingly slow beam up and down sequences and post-battle reports. Just donât ever use it on the conversations, because theyâre all brilliant.
There, I barely compared it to the brilliant Void Bastards at all, although I urge you to play both. Itâs tempting to call Wild Bastards an evolution, but thatâs unfair to Void, which has its excellent crafting elements and the permadeath of characters (albeit with persistent progress). Whatâs crucially similar about both, beyond the excellent art and fantastic sense of humor, is that unlike so many roguelite games, they both want you to win. Theyâre about progressing forward, being able to reach an ending, and then starting all over to try it completely differently. Itâs just that in Wild Bastards, thereâs so much more that can be different each time.
