Far Far West Preview
I’ve always been a sucker for Western-themed games. It’s a rich setting, naturally filled with iconic heroes, drama, grit, and mystery. In games like Far Far West those dusty streets and lonesome canyons can also be populated by robotic cowboys, skeleton miners, and spell-slinging ranch hands.
OK Fun at the Corral
Far Far West is just galloping into Early Access, but it’s easy to see where things are headed. Fundamentally, it’s a four-person cooperative extraction shooter, though it can be played alone, which is a lot less fun. Each mission sees you heading out into the Western hills to complete a series of objectives before facing off against a boss and boarding the train back to town.
Far Far West is not the first “weird” West game, or the first to include magic and spellcasting. Still, given the game’s art and overall vibes, slinging fireballs and casting lightning attacks feels perfectly natural. You play as a robot cowboy with a robot horse. Most of your enemies are robotic, too. You have an expanding arsenal of upgradable weapons like pistols, rifles, and shotguns. But you also have lots of elemental magic spells, and coating an enemy with slow-acting acid before finishing them off with a shotgun never gets old.
There are a ton of pick-ups in the world, like healing bottles of hooch, dynamite, and of course, caches of ammo. Far Far West wouldn’t be a first-person shooter without some sort of temporary modifiers to change up your playstyle. In this case, they’re called Jokers, and they give you temporary boosts or wacky abilities.
Cartoon Violence
Maybe I missed it, but I’m a little unclear what the narrative is all about aside from the Sheriff handing out missions like Halloween candy. I do know that the action is frenetic and moving through the world is fast and fluid. There’s the horse, tuned for speed, and your character can do all the usual moves like jumping and air-dashing. Combat feels pretty great, though targeting can be a bit finicky.
I really liked Far Far West’s stylized cartoon visuals, which have just enough detail to ground them in Old West iconography. It’s a colorful game with some impressively animated spells, weather, and combat effects. At least so far, there’s not a huge variety of enemy types. Some of the more frantic battles reminded me of a Serious Sam encounter.
The scenery is recognizably WesterN, with painted hills, canyons, snowy forests and cactus-filled deserts. Now and then you’ll fight through a mine or sleepy ghost town. Unfortunately, there are also vast spaces with nothing much to do or see, but keep on riding towards the next objective marker on the map.
Hitting the Bullseye
Right now, Far Far West has a lot of potential for get-in, get-out fun for a group of friends. It could use a little more story and a few additional options, like maybe solo or deathmatch modes, some experience that didn’t necessarily require squading up. Far Far West feels a little bare-bones right now. With time and additional content, it might be easy to recommend for friends tired of the usual sci-fi military extraction shooters.
***PC code provided by the publisher for preview***
