Wild Guns: Reloaded (Switch)

For many years, as I searched for co-op games to play with guests, the game Wild Guns for the Super Nintendo consistently cropped up. Heralded as an underappreciated multiplayer title, for many years I considered getting it until eventually word of a remake made me decide to wait and play what should be a superior version of the title. However, in a baffling decision, Natsume’s remake Wild Guns: Reloaded altered the multiplayer in some disastrous ways.

 

Wild Guns Reloaded is a shooting gallery type game where your characters are standing in the play field as you target the enemies and objects you wish to shoot.  Moving your character and moving your targeting reticle are both controlled by the same directional inputs, and while a dodge roll can move you around faster and gives brief invincibility, doing it means you aren’t shooting at the time. Wild Guns: Reloaded is already rather hard because of this fact, but it is a difficulty you can get accustomed to in single player. Multiplayer, however, is structured in a way that absolutely punishes you for wanting to play with a friend. Up to four players can play simultaneously, but as soon as you choose this mode you forced to share three extra lives across all players. While you do get your starting life for free, any skill discrepancy across the group can lead to one player being an albatross around the neck of the other players as they end up burning through the group’s spare lives. There are no continues in multiplayer either, meaning as soon as everyone has burned through their starting lives and the back-ups, that’s a game over and replaying it will take you back to the game’s very first level. What’s even more baffling about this situation is that the original game’s multiplayer had continues and this game’s single player includes various difficulty settings, including an easy mode as well as the beginner mode where you have infinite lives. Perhaps the idea was that having up to four players all working together would increase your firepower to the degree that the enemies would be too easily defeated, but the smaller groups suffer for it and even with a packed crew, the difficulty means that unless you’ve gathered a group of seasoned Wild Guns players for your team, there will inevitably be unfortunate deaths that limit your ability to see the whole game.

 

As such, Wild Guns: Reloaded did not turn out to be the enjoyable multiplayer title I had heard about all these years, but there is still the better balanced single-player mode to be played, and as such this review will mostly be looking at the game’s quality in reference to solo runs. It is a shame the legendary co-op was butchered in such a manner, but even the game’s design as discussed hereon in was mostly present in the original so most praise and criticism going forward is somewhat relevant to both releases of the game.

There really isn’t much of a plot to Wild Guns: Reloaded, a woman named Annie seeking revenge for the death of her family and receiving help from the three other player characters. The game takes place in the Wild West but with plenty of sci-fi twists thrown into the action. Robots, cowboys with cyborg parts, laser weapons, and other technological enhancements make this more than just a game about cowboys shooting bandits, but despite having enormous mechanical bosses and even some laboratory like locations, Wild Guns: Reloaded never feels like it completely shakes off the Old West feel. You may be shooting down machines with impossible weaponry, but you’re doing so in saloons, at a gold mine, and out in the bone-filled desert. It’s almost like the setting itself received a cybernetic enhancement, the game never completely forgetting it’s meant to feature cowboys and dusty old towns even when it’s got some insane new giant robot ready to cap off the stage.

 

The two main playable characters are Annie and Clint, both wearing garb that fits the Wild West side of things with almost nothing telling you these period-appropriate looks would soon find themselves up against sci-fi threats. Wild Guns: Reloaded add two new characters who fit the mixed aesthetic more closely, the stockier Doris brandishing two metallic arms proudly and the adorable dog Bullet relying on a drone to do the fighting for him. Annie and Clint both rely on an infinite ammo machine gun to do their shooting, but Doris takes a more explosive approach to the fight. While all characters have a bomb option to deal heavy damage to anything nearby, Doris’s main method of attack is throwing dynamite, Doris even able to hold down the button to throw multiple bundles at once. Doris’s high power but slow attacking method makes her difficult to start with but she can potentially be the strongest character once you’ve mastered the game’s systems, able to obliterate much of the opposition if used properly. Bullet is almost the newbie friendly character by contrast. The dog’s drone only needs to have its aiming reticle in the right vicinity to target enemies and other objects, and if there are multiple targets in a cluster you might not even have to move your aim to get them all. If the drone is hit by a shot Bullet won’t die but he does become unable to defend himself for a bit, but while this easier character option is nice to have for beginners, it’s not like a team of fresh-faced Bullets will be able to make up for the strange multiplayer choices.

You can pick up different weapon types as you play Wild Guns: Reloaded, brief stints with weapons like a laser, shotgun, and grenade launcher giving you more powerful shots for a limited time provided you’re a character who can make use of them. However, the shooting is always somewhat hampered by the controls tying your movement to them as well. There are plenty of things to shoot in Wild Guns: Reloaded, some providing points or power-ups if you take the time to destroy the environment, while others are of course enemies who will try to shoot you or otherwise take you down themselves. Sometimes enemies will get up close and personal and must be dispatched with a melee attack, and other times you might want to double tap your shoot button to lasso a foe for a brief stun where you won’t have to worry about them shooting you. Splitting your focus between aiming and moving requires many moments where you can’t really deal with the opposition on screen lest you risk death, and while the dodge can be abused to avoid a lot of trouble, it’s time that could have been spent doing the more enjoyable task of shooting the reasons you are dodging in the first place. Depending on where you’re looking it can be hard to see enemy fire coming to.  Your character will have a small text bubble saying “Look Out!” appear beside them if they’re about to be hit by some attacks, this feature not totally universal but meant to make up for moments where you’d otherwise be unfairly hit by shots. Unfortunately this means you do have to spend some time focusing on your character’s safety again since the speech bubble is not so large that it will draw your attention to it in the more populated firefights.

 

Wild Guns: Reloaded is able to achieve a fair level of balance because of helpful small features, but it does feel like it often requires sacrificing engagement with the level and enemy designs to achieve. Not counting the secret levels only reachable on the higher difficulties, Wild Guns: Reloaded contains six levels you’ll see consistently that have two unique areas each and usually a boss in their own special area. Level end bosses are often mammoth machines that feel like a good test of your dodging skill save for a man who flies around with a jetpack whose battle drags on due to his mobility advantage, but its the minibosses who are really strange. In the first level you’ll encounter tough enemies like a mechanical cowboy and a well-dressed man who slinks around the ground to avoid your shots, and you’ll keep seeing these guys throughout the rest of the game. Enemy recycling is pretty common, but when its regular cowboys shooting at you or simple machines it’s not as egregious as facing what seemed like unique enemy types at the time. Fighting something like a tank is still certainly an impressive and appropriately bonkers cap to a stage, but despite making sure to roll out new regular enemies across the levels, it still feels like a lot of normal play is spent with foes who grow a little too familiar.

THE VERDICT: The astonishingly harsh design of Wild Guns: Reloaded’s multiplayer is an enormous disappointment, but whereas that restricts continues and lives to its detriment, the solo play still comes out appropriately challenging without being overbearing. A bit too much of your time is spent ensuring your safety in this shooting gallery game though and some enemy types crop up a bit too much, but impressive boss battles and the general thrill of using special weapons or characters to fight your way through this science-fiction Wild West means there is still something enjoyable to be found in this remake. However, this somewhat fun shooter doesn’t really earn its glowing reputation, even the single player having a few small issues like its flawed warning system.

 

And so, I give Wild Guns: Reloaded for Nintendo Switch…

An OKAY rating. While finding out how butchered the multiplayer mode was definitely disheartening, the shooting gallery gameplay on show doesn’t feel like the best basis for cooperative play. Overcoming a difficult but fair challenge or playing with friends can enhance the emotional response individual players have to a game, but Wild Guns: Reloaded seems like it could have focused on greater engagement instead of having its heavy focus on survival in opposition to strange limitations. Movement is certainly the odd part, the original release’s reliance on the SNES controller not truly limiting since the L and R buttons could have been relied on for motion instead of tying directional inputs to aiming as well, but this remake sticks to that original awkward blend of movement and targeting that requires additional time spent on the defensive to avoid unintentional death. The small “Look Out!” indicator isn’t as helpful as it could be either due to its small size and its location being tied to your character’s position, the player having to turn attention away from their targets to have a chance of spotting it. On the other hand though, the dodge options are still so useful that many of the regular enemies can be ignored as you fling your character about to survive in a maneuver that detracts from the actual time you spent trying to shoot down targets.

 

Bosses are definitely exciting breaks from the norm as they ask for more specific strategies and don’t often have little minions requiring constant evasion, but despite being pretty stylish in its designs and setting, Wild Guns: Reloaded doesn’t feel like it’s an enormous upgrade to the shooting gallery concept despite all the complications it has added to it. Extra play options like Doris and Bullet are some interesting twists for longevity as are the secret levels and boss rush mode, but Wild Guns: Reloaded really shot itself in the foot by sabotaging its multiplayer option, the game feeling like it needs a greater diversity in enemies and content because this remake can no longer work as an accessible yet challenging co-op title.