REVIEW : Gunslingers & Zombies (PC)
Last night’s Whiskey had nothing special about it. It’s happening for real this time. Welcome to the Weird West, where the rules have shifted.
Gunslingers & Zombies is a hilarious action-adventure strategy game that combines two popular pop-culture themes: the Wild West and the undead. Become one of the zombie apocalypse’s triggermen. Plan your strategies and apply them in turn-based battles. Enjoy a lighthearted take on the Wild West in a post-apocalyptic setting where nothing is normal. Face a variety of themed undead, including the fearsome Buffalo Zombie! Allow those zombies to taste your pistols, rifles, canons, or knives, and make them regret the day they were… erhm… undead.
What I like:
First and foremost, I enjoy the game’s concept! The XCOM-style turn-based grid system feels fantastic.
I like the game’s polygon-style graphics; I think they go well with the concept of zombies and gunslingers.
The spawner mechanic is fantastic; essentially, you shoot through zombies until you reach the building they’re emerging from, and then your character enters the house and kills every zombie inside one by one; this feels great mid-mission.
The missions ranged from setting up a line of defence to pushing forward, destroying zombie spawners, and collecting items, which could include finding them on the floor, looting buildings, or killing zombies that drop them.
The star system is a simple, yet effective way of allowing the player to replay these missions to complete every little side objective.
Weapons, more specifically that certain characters had certain weapons that were longer-range, and more damaged. There is also a knife where the player can stab the zombie up close (although not recommended unless the zombie attacks you first) this is a good strategy system on how to preserve ammo.
The damage system is terrific as well; if you’re behind a zombie, you’ll deal a lot more damage, which feels fantastic. Small details like the bandage system can help a lot if the player decides to have one of their characters take the hits from the zombies.
The number of different-looking zombies is excellent; some zombie games will have one generic zombie with no variation in appearance, but the developers have multiple different-looking zombies.
What I didn’t enjoy:
I would miss 96/100 shots four times in a row, which placed me in a horrible situation. This could have been due to my bad luck, but the hit chance occasionally felt incorrect (this could just be me though)
I’m not sure if the creators are working on different kinds of unique zombies, like a shooter or a tank, but it would ultimately make the game more intriguing (especially after 20 or so missions)
The pistol currently feels mostly useless, as even when I run out of ammo for the rifles, I tend to go melee, and the pistol just feels a little underpowered right now.
In the course of my game, I only came across two bugs.
The first occurred at the spawner level; on a couple of the spawners, one zombie would be outside of the building despite being placed in the actual spawner building in-game. The second “bug” happened on the final level when I tried to click the item to pick up; I discovered that I needed to click on the actual square it was on. (It would be much more comfortable if we could also click the item.)
