Wild Bastards has got killer style and ideas, but feels like a scattered shotgun blast instead of a bullseye

Blue Manchu’s Void Bastards, published back in the day by Humble Games, was a ‘strategy-shooter’ roguelike I enjoyed enough to grab twice, one DRM-free and another on Steam. More than five years later after its launch, Wild Bastards is taking things in a new direction I haven’t been vibing with.

I was really excited to jump into this one. It looked remarkably stylish and breezy, the sort of perfect indie release for the pre-autumn AAA madness period. Unfortunately, my first few hours with it have been middling, and I was wondering whether I wasn’t in the right headspace for it, yet some reviews are echoing many of my feelings.

From the get-go, it becomes abundantly clear Wild Bastards is a huge love letter to westerns. “Of course, it basically says so on the cover!” Well, yeah, but you might have the looks and lack the right voice. That ain’t an issue here, as Blue Manchu has nailed the banter between characters (as annoying as it can often be) and the atmosphere of a sci-fi setting that borrows all of its skeleton from cowboy and bandits movies. There’s even a team of 13 legendary outlaws and enough cliches to stop a train. It wears its influences proudly on its sleeve.