Cooperative games are all the rage these days. Almost every week there’s a new game that comes out of nowhere to top charts and, just as fast, fades away. Competition is fierce in this space. While it is from an indie team, and it is a co-op experience, Evil Raptor’s Far Far West is taking on the big leaguers with its own mix of action and style.
Developed by a tiny team, this is another game that first blew up thanks to a demo on Steam, but now the first-person shooter has entered early access as a far larger and content-packed adventure. I have spent over a dozen hours inside this wacky world full of robot cowboys and undead opponents, seeing how it plays as a solo player and with a group. What I found was a game that has successfully integrated ideas from some of the biggest names in the co-op space, and even improved upon them.
Read on to find my full thoughts on Far Far West’s early access release.
Far Far West
Evil Raptor has smashed together Westerns with supernatural and alien themes to bring this bizarre world to life. There are hordes of ghosts, skeletons, and liches littering the landscape. Taking on the role of robot cowboys, it’s our job to clean up these cursed lands and bring back the gold and souls we may happen to come across. It’s a simple setting, and there’s almost no lore to speak of, but everything sort of makes sense in this weird west setting.
After selecting a map, Far Far West drops the squad into a large arena that has a whole spread of objectives, collectibles, bosses, and side quests, and it’s our choice what we accomplish in that session and in what order. I could go directly to the final boss to end the round or explore every nook and cranny to tackle all the side activities. While these optional activities usually provide currencies for future ability unlocks or temporary perks, several also unlock more map regions for going on future missions, so there is a purpose to the exploration.
The quests and puzzles of these maps only take a handful of minutes, at most, to beat, but it’s always good fun thanks to the large number of diverse options I ran into. I don’t even know if I have found all of them either. My group has deciphered Morse codes and memory games, delivered lost cacti to their parents, and even sat for written and physical exams to certify our horseback riding skills.
The same whacky style is extended to bosses too, keeping to the theme. The first time I realized that we would be fighting an entire floating building as a boss was when I realized I would like this setting. Since then, we have tackled necromancers, haunted trains, and vaguely dragon-like entities. Finishing off the map boss transforms the game into a horde shooter that has the cowboy crew surviving unending waves of enemies until an escape train comes through for extraction. I hope the development team expands on these types of unique fights in future updates with the same creativity.
In addition to having five difficulty levels, I also appreciated that each venture out into a map let me choose how intense I wanted the current experience to be. For instance, if I wanted the final boss fight to be easier, I could wrap up side activities in the area to grab all the temporary perks I could stack on top of my own build. This method has let my group clear difficulty levels that felt impossible to overcome in the beginning without needing to put too much effort into a chill, late-night co-op session.
Each of the available regions that I could set my crew upon had its own visual style and terrain. We could be riding horseback across open-ended deserts in one mission and sliding across the frozen lakes of a snowy region next. I have also found transportation systems attached to each of these regions that are unique to that map. These can be teleportation holes, ziplines, minecarts, jump pads, and trains. The variety is impressive, especially considering these options are valuable for skirmishing with enemies while avoiding being surrounded.
The personal horse (which is also robotic) can be summoned with a button to quickly traverse across maps to reach further objectives quicker. Compared to the game’s addicting on-foot movement mechanics, which I’ll get to next, this doesn’t feel that great. I am usually getting stuck on terrain, getting knocked off by enemies, or getting turned around accidentally on horseback because of the simple controls. I am seriously considering equipping a specific perk that removes the horse entirely and gives me a speed boost instead. I hope this is an area the studio can improve upon.
Builds, builds, and even more builds
The movement systems of a shooter affect my enjoyment of it heavily, and Far Far West has managed to hit that target. The mechanics are simple. In addition to the standard WASD movement, the robot cowboys can jump and leap in any direction at any time. What's interesting is that chaining these two moves in a timely pattern lets you almost glide across the map at higher speeds (like a pseudo-bunny hop for classic shooter fans). It’s remarkably satisfying to pull off during downtimes between fights or desperate boss fights while trying to keep ahead of deadly effects.
Speed is something I enjoy in games like these, so imagine my delight when I realized I could stack character upgrades, weapon upgrades, and power-ups for the specific purpose of becoming fast. Just running around, I am at least twice as fast as my friend (who went for a jumping-focused build), but whenever I kill an enemy or reload my weapon, larger boosts get applied to my speed. Add in the jump-leap gliding mechanic I mentioned before, and I can't even keep track of where I am flying off to sometimes. It’s a joy to get this type of freedom of movement in games.
The same build creativity can be applied to the myriad of weapons available for taking down foes and bosses, which range from shotguns and sniper rifles to boomerangs and miniguns. Each one has its own shooting style, reloading speed, and other aspects that uniquely affect the play style depending on the situation in a match. For example, the lever-action rifle deals massive damage per bullet but requires plenty of running while it’s being reloaded, while the dual-wielding pistols can pepper an entire group of enemies (followed by an explosive reload), but ammo can be easy to mismanage.
Just like character upgrades, weapons have their own stats that can be customized. Even though I prefer single-fire weapons, my choices now shoot like machine guns and have massive magazine sizes. Once again, and quite quickly, my friend and I had different favorite weapon combos and variants forming.
Aside from getting a kick out of the sleek movement and customizability, Far Far West’s ability system is what I most enjoyed using and tinkering with. I was already expecting plenty of gunplay, considering this is a first-person shooter featuring cowboys, but when the magic spells get thrown in, it becomes a whole other beast.
There are multiple power trees to unlock and explore. The categories fire, electricity, acid, voodoo, and cactus each start off with simple spells that shoot balls of their respective energy, ground mines, or minor heals. As more of their upgraded versions unlocked, I was soon laying down beams of fire from the sky or stealing health from enemies. However, it doesn’t stop there, as what’s even more interesting is the combos.
The order of the spells being used and their combinations matter when putting a couple or trio down on the same location, as they can stack together to give entirely new effects. The powers I use might multiply the attack into an area of effect, fuse their forms to spawn tornados of fire, or even convert enemies to fight their own side. Each player can only equip three spells. There can be four players in a squad. You can do the math about the amount of blasts, sprays, thunderclaps, heals, turrets, teleports, and so much more that can happen in a single fight. Of course, things get hard to see when everything is a mix of colors and sparks during these times, but I have no complaints to give when I see a boss's health bar drop halfway just from a single wave of our eccentric attacks.
Saloon 101
In between missions, the robots head towards the safety of the Saloon, and this brightly lit area is probably the best-implemented hub I have seen for a multiplayer game. The Saloon has armament and magic vendors, and just off to the side is an ability testing range. It just takes a second to quickly swap out builds or refund upgrades to see how the new changes feel or the new damage output. I was spending a lot of time in this range with my friend to find out how our newly-unlocked abilities worked with each other to make grandiose combos, discussing how future matchups could change how we dealt with bosses and tough objectives entirely.
It’s possible to invite players straight into this area to go on missions, and after every round, everyone in the team can also return here to split up or go on further missions without a break. The server browser is even accessible from the Saloon to quickly jump out to another match.
I have seen so many co-op games mess up this portion, where there isn’t enough focus on the place where players spend their downtime. Even the most high-budget games launch without firing ranges for testing builds or straightforward methods for inviting friends, only promising to add them in updates that are months away. Far Far West developer has managed to bring all these aspects and more together even for an early access release, building a strong foundation.
Conclusion
There are two areas where Far Far West sits above the pack when it comes to action games of this genre. One is the incredibly easy but deep build customization system, which had me eagerly trying out weapons, magical skills, and combos with friends after every round and had me just as eager to go back into the fray with the new loadouts. Second, it's the movement system, which is sleek, fast, and hyperresponsive, and that is a big plus for the FPS fan inside me.
Something that I enjoyed from the get-go was just how straightforward the game presents itself. The server browser, simple controls, clean UI, fast loading times, and immediate directions for having fun make up a refreshing experience that reminds me of the old Left 4 Dead days. I could launch the game and be fighting a horde or a haunted train with a friend within 20 seconds.
Finding a new cooperative game for a group of friends is never an easy task. Contenders usually get ousted due to pricing, complexity, simplicity, art style, or being too far outside the hype bubble. Even during early access, this $20 game gets an easy recommendation from me. Evil Raptor has managed to grab lightning in a bottle, and only time will tell if it can hold onto that spark as it travels through early access. For my friends and me, Far Far West is firmly placed in our small but worthy rotation of co-op games.
Far Far West is now out on Steam as an early access release for $19.99. The studio says it plans to have a full release in 12 months.
This review was conducted on a PC copy of the game provided by the publisher.
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