Far Far West is a surefire breath of fresh air for those longing to play co-op but also wanting of a persistent, level-based approach with collectibles, secrets, unlocks and quests rather than everything being run-based. You’ll be forging new iron, saddling tricked-out mounts and summoning an army of cactus pistoleroes in no time — all with a group of up to four total players.
Games like Warhammer 40,000 Darktide, Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine and Warhammer 40,000 Helldivers manage to have permanent progression and level-based blasting without going so hard on the roguelike elements, but indies tend to avoid that space. Gunfire Reborn, Abyssus and that new Painkiller game (Sorry for reminding you) all commit to roguelike, procedural maps and random drops each run. That’s not inherently a bad time, but it can leave a fellow hankering for something more bespoke.
What Far Far West lacks in character upgrades it more than makes up for in a perfect difficulty ramp, diverse spell list, persistent bespoke worlds and weirdly wonderful objectives.
Slick shooting, marvellous magic and ridiculous ragdoll
Right off the bat Far Far West oozes with that semi-low-poly look that made Gunfire Reborn so fun to blast through. This time, though, we’re all saddled up in the wild west complete with saloons, stables and steampunk trains. Robotic farm animals roam about, and the train pulls up to the station in the game’s hub to take you off to a mission.
When you arrive, you’ll want to saddle up. The robotic steeds of Far Far West are your get-out-of-jail card for tight situations, as well as a way to make traversing the large open-maps more fun. Not only are you faster out on the open plains, but your horse can also jump you higher and make use of carriages dotted around that catapult you even further.
The gunplay is smooth (Once you turn acceleration off for controller players), hit feedback is exceptional and the ragdoll effect of enemies (Or bits of enemies) makes weapons feel powerful. It also clearly communicates when something is dead, which is vital in more hectic shoot-outs where target prioritisation and quick thinking is the key to victory.
Like most shooters of this kind you need to keep moving to keep alive, but without a sprint function the game is more reminiscent of a Halo co-op campaign than a nu-DOOM style movement shooter. Movement on foot is deliberate and picking of enemies at the right moment really matters. This cycle between grounded, weighty movement on foot contrasted to the fast, fluid movement on horseback is fantastic for engagement — keeping the maps from feeling too sluggish.
Once your boots do hit the ground you won’t just be slinging lead (Or arrows, or Sheriff Stars that act like Suriken) as you have access to 3 spell slots. These slots can be assigned 1 spell each from the list of 25+ available, ranging from fire magic to cactus summoning and even using the power of voodoo.
If that diversity wasn’t enough, just wait until you and your friends all spam spells at once…
Interactive skill combinations with dozens to uncover
I was levelling cactus magic (as one does) and so had been routinely deploying a cactus mine, which waits for enemy movement then detonates 3 times in quick succession. The “plonk, plonk, plonk” of the detonations was well-established in my brain as a cue that my mine was going off.
My co-op partner (Hi Alex) was levelling voodoo with the goal of unlocking a new revive spell for us in harder difficulty modes. Once, during a particularly hectic defence objective, I’d thrown down my cactus mine and my partner snapped her fingers for her voodoo magic to seek out enemies at the same time. Suddenly, our ears were assaulted with 3 consecutive tolls of doom-guiding bells…
Her voodoo magic had hit my cactus mine, infusing the 3 explosions it normally has with the power of voodoo, and adding the thematic bell toll effect to each explosion. It took us accidentally triggering the interaction two more times to realise what was happening, and even longer to realise that enemies hit by this combo were brainwashed onto our side! Bear in mind nothing about the cactus mine brainwashes, and the voodoo ability in question was for lifesteal only. This means spell combinations can actually create new effects for combat, not just combine two effects into one.
From then on, I’d always call out when I had a mine about to blow so that it could be infused — be it with voodoo, fire, acid or lightning. In a party of four players the number of combinations would be exponentially higher still, and I can imagine some niche applications for dedicated players. The other combination we found was that calling an orbital laser onto a patch of electrified cloud creates a fire tornado. If that doesn’t sound over-the-top and fun to pull off, I just think maybe the game isn’t for you.
More than five open-area maps with collectibles, quests, and objectives
All this juicy combat takes place in open-world style maps. Each map is hand-crafted without procedural generation. Objectives can spawn in different places and different POIs can be active, but the maps are explorable and learnable across multiple missions. This might sound like a bad thing, since the maps could become stale, but fortunately Far Far West combats that in a few ways:
- Collectibles litter each map, encouraging exploration in a way a procedural game can’t. From jumping puzzles to hidden nooks in the edges of cliffs or even using dynamite to uncover old mine shafts — there’s secrets everywhere to discover.
- Each map has a Secret Objective that you can discover and solve for a unique reward. It might take multiple missions on a map to work out what you have to do, so that the next time you’re on that map you can go for it and try to earn the special reward.
- Traversal by horse is fast, and all required objectives appear on the HUD without having to open your map. If you just want to get in and get out, the map size doesn’t hinder that playstyle at all.
- There are, even on day one of early access six different maps. With new ones on the horizon and difficulty modes adding new twists to all of them, there’s plenty of content there for a respectable early access launch.
- Mission objectives are varied and not ashamed to be weird. There’s certainly a lot of “defend thing” type objectives, but you’ll have to be turning valves or equalising pressure or inputting codes while doing so, all providing a bit more variety to proceedings (Instead of doing the same three Auspex puzzles again, Darktide…)
Difficulty modes that don’t create bullet sponges
While increasingly harder areas and missions will inherently burn through more ammo and resources, Far Far West does some of the best work I’ve seen in the genre to avoid just padding enemies with stats. Difficulty increases add new enemy types, increase enemy density and add “Danger Zones” to maps that provide combat and navigational challenges. If a danger zone overlaps an objective, you’re in for a rough fight with hordes of enemies.
Map difficulty is also based on things like environmental hazards (Honestly those bees in the woodland area are right up there with Fallout New Vegas Cazadores as being the most annoying bug enemies ever) and patrolling elite groups.
Enemies currently fall into two factions. There’s necromancer minions like skeleton pirates, reanimated charging bulls and ghostly liches. Then, there’s robotic soldiers with shields and precise laser rifles that spawn in smaller groups but can mess up your best-laid plans if they aggro at the wrong moment.
More enemy factions and types are due to be added in early access, but the initial selection is enough to keep you on your toes and satisfy your curiosity about how the game will play by 1.0. There’s also plans to have endgame difficulty mode modifiers that could push these enemy types even further, as if being gunned down by a gatling-gun skeleton going “WAAAAAAAAAA” wasn’t already hard enough.
Simplistic progression and bottlenecked currency don’t ruin the game
There’s problems with the early access state of the game, I won’t lie. Mainly, the character progression and economy. While unlocking weapons, spells and “Jokers” (Passive buff cards) all feel great, the character and weapon stat progression doesn’t.
You need EXP to earn a stat point first, but then need to pay gold to actually use that stat point. It’s the same story with weapon unlocks — you can spend six matches collecting weapon parts and excitedly hurry to the smith, only to realise that because you upgraded your character’s ammo capacity from your last level up you now don’t have enough gold to actually create the gun you’ve got the parts for.
The shared currency for making weapons, converting weapon EXP into weapon stat points and converting character EXP into character stat points creates a huge bottleneck for gold. It can feel like player EXP is pointless because my gold is always needed for weapon skill points, and if I did the opposite then the weapon EXP would feel pointless in the same way.
Fortunately, that overarching system doesn’t stop the gunplay being fun, spell combos popping off and objectives being engaging.
Far Far West is a grand old time, and well worth trying out now despite being in early access. More often than not I’ll recommend waiting for full release, but actually if you’re fan of ragdolling enemies, tight gunplay and experimental spell combinations without any roguelike guff, then Far Far West is ready for you as it is.
Far Far West is available on Steam
