Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West Review

If you missed our preview on Lead and Gold then you missed out on probably the most exciting weekend of gaming I have had in a long time. The games premise is very simple; it's a team based game allowing you to play Deathmatch and Capture the Flag type modes along with others, but there is something different that has made this game shine out above the rest. It may have been the price, and at £9.99/$14.99/€14.99 (you really are getting a bargain) or the prospect of team based gameplay in a wild west environment, but it has a something special about it. If you have played any of the major team based games currently available you will notice that a lot of the good features of these games have been taken into account when creating this game and the team behind this have had some definite experience in games development. Some of the team have worked on such titles as Ghost Recon Advanced Warfighter 1 and 2, Just Cause 1 and 2 and Bionic Commando: Rearmed to name a few.

So what is this bargain of a game like? Well it's fun and I mean that in the truest sense of the word. All the matches I have been in have been fast paced and a lot of nice and great people to play against. There have been a few issues with lag but you can normally find a good game quickly and the in-game server list will grade servers on ping and also what players are playing on what servers, so you can always find a game with people the same rank as you so you don't always feel out numbered. At the time of writing this there hasn't been any dedicated servers to play the game on so hopefully these will be added in the near future as this would be the icing on the cake for a lag free game, as currently the game utilises a matchmaking lobby system akin to Modern Warfare 2.

The game premise is that it is set in the wild west and to be honest this is one of the parts of history which really hasn't had a lot of games done for which means that this is a fresh idea. Once you have found a game you can then pick one of the four classes that is available to you.

The first is The Gunslinger, a light class as you only carry a pistol on this character but you can move a lot quicker than the other characters. However don't feel that you will be out gunned in a fight either. The pistol you have is accurate and you can always use your special secondary attack which blasts a enemy with 6 bullets in quick succession. This is useful for clearing out a few enemies in close quarters.

The second class is The Trapper. This is your typical sniper class. The powerful sniper rifle is brilliant and there is a fair few places to pick people off from throughout most of the maps. The great thing about this class is the fact that you can set two traps and then pick them off while they are stuck in the trap. While this doesn't seem like too much it is a advantage to stop players from sneaking up behind you or even to stop people from using certain routes on certain maps. If you are in are caught in a close quarter battle, you also have a pistol to fall back on. While this isn't as accurate as The Gunslinger's pistol, it is effective enough to finish off a nearby enemy.

The next characters is The Deputy, he is a good mix of long and medium range. This class allows you to take full advantage of his rifle which is accurate but also deadly. The secondary attack for The Deputy is that he can tag enemies. This not only shows up on your screen but also everyone else in your team. This is really effective during some of the gameplay modes because you can mark certain enemies. This will then direct you teams attention on to the player. Again this player can switch to a pistol for close quarters if you so wish. This is really effective if your main weapon is out and you haven't got cover to reload.

The final character you get to play is The Blaster. The Blaster has a powerful shotgun but sadly he is really only effective at short range, but an enemy wont last long against a Blaster's shotgun as the damage is immense. The secondary attack is TNT which can be thrown towards enemies to create havoc or to clear the path ahead. While this makes him probably one of the best defensive players in the game, he is also useful when moving to a different location.

As you can see, the characters that you can play are very unique and it will take you sometime to master all of the abilities and find out which one you prefer playing as. I seem to have got on well with using The Gunslinger as this was the quick and fast type of play that I enjoy playing in most team games. However I must admit that The Deputy is a great class and I have enjoyed playing that one as well.

You may notice that when you get close to another player, a circle in the top center of your screen will begin to fill. You have four symbols that represent different talents that your characters have. Stand next to one of them for a while and you will notice that they will start to fill up. These vary from character to character ranging from extra strength to better accuracy plus if you are standing next to a player you will also heal. These mechanics are good in the game as they make sure that you stick close in a team and show you that one man on his own can't take down a team of players.

As well as these extra perks you will also notice that there is a flag in your spawn area. Pick this up and other players will be able to spawn directly onto you. This helps with backup and allows players to jump right back into the action. However if you die and drop the flag your team can still spawn on the flag until a enemy walks over it. This can sometimes lead to a few problems with constant enemies suddenly coming from nowhere only for you to realise that no-one picked up the enemies flag. However there is also another problem I found with this, This is that if a sniper so happens to pick the flag up you may realise that you're only about five seconds away from your spawn point anyway due to the sniper playing defence next to your starting area.

The tutorials throughout the practice mode are well thought out and give you a nice view on how the game plays, as well as what you would need to do throughout the game in the different game modes. At the moment, the Beta brings four main game modes, all of which have different objectives for you to achieve. Conquest is a simple run of the mill controlling zones mode. While one team has to capture the zones from A - E the other team will have to do this in reverse, so from E - A. Obviously the first two or three zones you capture provide very few problems until you get to the central point where there is just mayhem.

The next mode is Greed, in this mode it's up to your team to try and get as many Gold Bags to your base as quickly as possible while the other team attempt the same. This is where you will have to work as a team, since the person who is carrying the Gold Bag can't actually use any weapons or run while they are carrying the gold so protection is necessary.

PowderKeg is probably one of the most fun modes I have played in a long while. Once again two teams play against each other, one has two objectives points which they need to blow up using barrels of explosive that are dotted around the map for you to use. The second team must, at all costs, protect these objectives. You're probably wondering where, exactly, does this become funny? Well, much like the, Gold Bags, if you are carrying a barrel of explosives you can only walk and can no longer use any weapons... So what could go wrong with that? Well, should the barrel be hit while you're holding it, you become a walking time bomb with only approximately five seconds to drop it, or you will become roast chicken.

All in all there is very little wrong with this game. Yeah so sometimes you may find that there are spawn campers picking you off before you even had a chance to get out of spawn but a few TNT's will soon sort these guys out. The main thing I would say is the lag that you can sometimes find on servers. This is because these are hosted by one of the players. You may find that at certain points of the night you may not be able to get a lag free game or even onto a server at all. Hopefully though dedicated servers will sort this out and I feel will make a huge difference to the lag free gaming we all want.

For £9.99/$14.99/€14.99 you're not going to go wrong with this game. Some of the gamers I tested this with have compared this to the likes of Team Fortress 2 and while I can see why a lot of people have done this, I think that this game can stand its own with this game; the developers have done a lot of work from the Beta such as fixing bugs and more importantly listening to the communities ideas and feedback which proves that they are doing a great job on this game and I cant wait to see more.