The Wild West

The Nintendo DS has done wonders for independent game developers, with hardware that’s relatively easy to program for and low licensing fees for development. Since the system’s launch, it has seen the release of many indie games that probably wouldn’t have stood a chance of being released on any other system. Titles like Cooking Mama, Drawn To Life, and the upcoming Dementium: The Ward are all examples of innovative titles being developed by small, independent development teams that have received critical acclaim. Unfortunately, not all indie software is made with such innovation and attention to detail; some seem more like an enthusiastic amateur effort than professional, polished retail-worthy software. Sadly, The Wild West, from Happy Happening and Majesco, falls into the latter category.

The game is set in a fictionalized version of the American West, circa 1840, where the characters are all anthropomorphized animals. Upon starting a new game, players choose between the two available characters: a wolf bounty hunter named Wolfy or a young cat girl named Catty. Both have personal vendettas against a criminal named Terano, and set off to take him out, with his massive criminal gang standing in their way. Each character has their own set of levels, but they are fairly similar. Aside from different levels and storyline segments, the characters play exactly the same.

Gameplay takes place primarily on the touchscreen, and is divided into two types of levels: 3D stages and 2D stages. 3D stages have the camera directly behind your character as they walk from place to place, getting into shootouts. During these sequences, you have no control over your character’s movement; instead, you simply tap the enemies to shoot them; the gameplay is most easily comparable to lightgun games, like Time Crisis or Point Blank. 2D stages, on the other hand, feature your character on the touchscreen from an overhead perspective, either walking or riding horseback. If you’re on foot, you walk forward with the D-pad, and on horseback, you automatically travel forward, but you can dodge left and right. In either case, enemies attack from above and the sides, and you must shoot them while avoiding their attacks and advancing toward the end of the stage. Your character has a circle around them onscreen, known as the “range circle”; shooting is accomplished by tapping the stylus within this circle in the direction you wish to fire. Upon reaching the end, you confront a boss character. The horseback sequences are reminiscent of scrolling shooters like Ikaruga or Radiant Silvergun, while the on-foot levels most closely resemble old-school action games like Commando or Soldiers of Fortune.

Problems present themselves almost immediately. Enemies swarm in huge numbers and their attacks are often unavoidable. Aiming during the 2D sequences is unnecessarily difficult; since you must determine the angle of fire by tapping the small range circle and you’re firing at moving targets, it’s not uncommon to fire at an enemy and miss them every time, taking fire from them all the while (enemies are, of course, supernaturally accurate). Your character can’t take very much damage before dying, so it’s pretty easy to use up your entire supply of lives in the course of one stage. The 3D stages have a similar fault; you’re often facing off against a dozen or more enemies at once, each of whom can take two to five shots before dying. Since you’ve got limited space to dodge and maneuver, you end up taking a lot of damage very quickly. All of these problems could have been solved with more frequent health power-ups and bonus weapons, or simply increasing the amount of damage you can sustain before dying. It seems as though the developers were trying to increase the difficulty and ended up simply making it very frustrating.

The game’s problems extend to technical features, as well. Inconsistent touch screen controls make a game like this, which relies on accurate touch screen-based shooting, close to unplayable; when you have to tap an enemy character (which may be no larger than 10 pixels) and the game can’t even consistently judge whether or not you hit him, it becomes an exercise in frustration. Graphical glitches abound; enemies pass through your character, or animate in awkward ways. While the characters are (usually) well-drawn and interestingly designed, environments are either sparse and bland (in the 2D stages) or blocky and pixilated (in the 3D stages).

The game’s not entirely bad. During the early stages when the game is still at a reasonable difficulty level, the core gameplay is fairly fun, if unpolished. The game’s storylines, while somewhat clichéd, are interesting and relatively well-written western tales of revenge. As I mentioned, the game’s characters are usually creative and graphically detailed, especially during dialog sequences. The game’s music is surprisingly good; although it sounds like a classic western soundtrack, the songs are catchy and very rarely grate on the nerves. There are also five touch screen-based minigames; all are at least somewhat entertaining diversions.

At the end of the day, though, this is a game that’s broken due to a severe lack of polish. It’s got a solid concept, some interesting ideas, and a totally flawed execution; it has so many fundamental issues that I can hardly believe it’s been professionally developed. This is not a bad game, it’s a busted game. Given more time or care during development, The Wild West could have been a simple, fun shooter for the DS. As it is, though, I can’t really imagine anyone enjoying their visit to The Wild West.

Gameplay: 3.8
Tap enemies while dodging their shots — or at least try to while navigating the game’s myriad frustrations, flaws, and glitches.

Graphics: 4.2
Well-designed, detailed characters inhabit a world that’s alternately flat and featureless or blocky and pixilated.

Sound: 5.4
Some of the western-style tunes are nice and memorable, others are more forgettable, but they’re rarely annoying or noticeably repetitive. Unfortunately, the sound effects are.

Difficulty: Hard
Like, really hard. Frustratingly full of unavoidable shots and screens full of enemies (that you can’t hit, due to inconsistent touch controls). Don’t be surprised if you blow through all your lives before you reach level 3. And what happens then? You’ve got to start the game over, of course!

Concept: 6.3
The Old West is an under-utilized setting for video games, and the use of animal characters adds a bit of cartoony charm to the whole thing. Conceptually, the gameplay’s not terribly inventive, but it does combine several styles we’ve not seen for a while in an interesting way.

Multiplayer: 5.3
Multiplayer here is relegated to the touch-screen minigames, which are kind of fun. Provided you’ve unlocked them (by playing the standard game), you could kill some time playing these with your friends.

Overall: 4.4
Good idea, terrible execution. Pervasive flaws, frequent glitches, and frustrating design choices ruin what could have been a simple fun shooter.