#D. F. 38 tries to teach how to play this damn game

[demonfox38]

Completed - Wild Guns Reloaded

What do you mean, you can't use a single screenshot from a video game as both your feminist philosophy and gender identity?

How about two? Would two work?

Man, so many things confuse me about Natsume as a company. Like, its history, for one. Splitting to form two different companies, both of which use Natsume in the name (Natsume Co. vs. Natsumi Atari, which no, is also not the Atari you are thinking of.) Then, of all products for Natsume-associated games to become popular, it's "Harvest Moon." Like. What? Why? I'm not saying the library of Natsume works is the most creative set, but they're all excellent zeitgeist encapsulations. Like, you want hard platforms with ninjas and bullet hell adjacent shooters with snappy music? Man, Natsume has you covered. But apparently, it's the dating/farming sims that the masses are all about. I just don't get it.

Look, man. I live in Iowa. If I wanted to do "Harvest Moon" shit, I would have done it in real life. Ya know. Joined 4-H. Picked rocks on my grandparents' farm. Showed animals at a county fair or two. Get knocked up in high school. Worked in an industrial slaughterhouse for Tyson. The kind of stuff that I have deliberately avoided.

Shooting robots in petticoats ain't something I can get in real life, so that's the game from the Natsume library I'm playin'. Living that sweet South Dakota lifestyle, I guess!

"Wild Guns Reloaded" (not to be confused with "Wild Arms," despite me doing that multiple times) is a 2016 remaster of Natsume’s SNES title "Wild Guns." Set in a vague futuristic depiction of the American West, you are charged with blasting the notorious Kid gang's faces cranially inward through a series of bullet-riddled levels. Do you have the structural integrity of a paper plate? Yes. But you also have access to several gun styles, bombs, electric lassos, grenades, and a drone being led around by a little long-haired dachshund. You'd be surprised what you can do with such an arsenal.

Look man, you're not playing this game for plot. You're doing it for the challenge and the sweet, sweet aesthetics.

Like, God. The original "Wild Guns" was already a stunner with its large, detailed sprite work and bombastic music. "Wild Guns Reloaded" has doubled-down on that, smoothing out its animations while keeping its bright sprites, broadening the play field, remixing its score with higher-fidelity instruments, adding two new stages, and throwing in two new characters with unique playstyles into the mix. And man, what a choice they made there, too! Getting a cute little doggie? Adorable. Getting a gigantic gal with legs like a Ninja Turtle action figure and the ability to pitch grenades in heaps at will? Outstanding!

Could there have been more logical character archetypes to pull? Sure. An Indigenous American, Latino, or Chinese immigrant character could have made sense, if care was taken into their implementation. But, man! I appreciate the stones of a game to toss a second Big Bertha into the mix. I'm not gonna be the bitch to argue against a dog, either. Excellent choices! Very creative! Bark bark bark!

As cool as it is, "Wild Guns Reloaded" is an unyielding steel wall in terms of difficulty. Like, yeah. I'm used to getting my teeth kicked in with certain games, so I wasn't surprised when even the first screen of the first stage was enough to push me back on my first try. What did surprise me is how few people on Steam have been able to drive through that first barrier. We're talking a 46.7% achievement rate for people able to beat the first boss. Next boss? 22.1%. Like, holy crap. Are we as a community that weak willed in spirit?

Having said that, I don't think it's actually very well communicated how to even play this game. Like, yeah, there's a manual. A whole whopping three pages long! But, that doesn't even remotely get into the logic behind the game. Or, hell. Even how to properly shoot.

So, I want to take a good chunk of this evaluation to do just that! Because damn it, this game is too fucking cool to not help other people get into it.

At heart, "Wild Guns Reloaded" is an arcade-style shooting gallery. In some sense, it could even be seen as an extreme variant of Treasure's "Sin and Punishment" series, or perhaps a game akin to "Galaga" or "Gradius." To survive, you need to not only dodge shots, but turn the tables on your enemies, using reflexes and memorization to hold waves back and smack bosses around for daring to try the same trick twice on you.

You have two planes of action to monitor:

The red space is your general field of play (where you are expected to shoot down.) The green space is the area that you occupy. Aiming and walking are tied to the same controls, so you will move around a little bit when you are drawing a shot.

If you are in danger of getting hit, the game will let you know with a little "Look Out!" message.

You can also watch the trajectory of an enemy's fire through this flashing cursor on screen:

Missiles will have a subtle shadow effect on your territory as well, so keep an eye out for them:

Your evasion options are either:

Walk with the control stick/directional keys (not generally advised unless you are playing the dog)

Jump using a dedicated Jump button (gets above obstacles)

Dodge by hitting the Jump button and your directional controls left or right while keeping the Fire button held (keeps your character on the ground; allows for faster recovery)

If the enemy lobs a stick of dynamite at you, you don't necessarily have to run. Stop firing, pick the dynamite up using the Fire button, and toss it back at your foes for a little extra damage! Whatever you decide to do, commit to it ASAP. You do not want to be around with that goes off.

Generally speaking, it's to your benefit to plant your heels in the center of the screen and only move out of it when you are about to take a hit. (If you had a buddy, perhaps you could split the screen. But, good luck with that…) The game tends to punish you for hanging out in the corners of the screen, often deliberately planting sentries at the edges to rebuff you. Camping in the corners also reduces your space to evade, so it's better to keep your options open for evasion by owning the center.

Your offensive options differ depending on the character you play. For the original characters (Clint and Annie), the standard style is:

Hold the Fire button to shoot an uninterrupted stream of bullets

Tap the Fire button repeatedly and release to shoot out an electric lasso that stuns your target (allowing you to return to regular file and blast the crap out of them for a few seconds)

Whack the Fire button when an enemy is in your territory (sending them flying back)

FYI—you should notice a brief change in your character's stance when you can whack an enemy.

Normal:

Whacking:

Doris' play style is based on building up power to unleash barrages of grenades at a target. Unlike Clint and Annie, she's waiting for a perfect opportunity to strike once and as hard as possible. Hold the Fire button to charge up her attack, then release it for her to unleash it. You can charge Doris' grenades up to an x7 multiplier, but most situations can be handled with at least a x3. Also, you can preserve her multiplier through dodges, so prioritize dodging on the ground to jumps where possible.

Bullet's style separates his hit box into two separate entities (the drone and the doggie.) The drone can be activated by pressing the Fire button. It will continuously attack anything that comes into its aiming reticle, but it will have to be released and reset for new targets outside of its range. Bullet can't defend himself, but he can wiggle around much quicker than other characters, so it makes it easy for him to avoid getting hit while his robot buddy provides a steady stream of damage.

You will have to disengage the robot to whack people back on the playing field, so make sure to keep Bullet by his buddy when someone comes creeping along the bottom of the stage. It is important to note that the robot can also be stunned, so you should try to keep it out of enemy fire when possible. It's just not a run ender necessarily if it takes a hit.

All characters have a bomb ability to clear the room when necessary to keep the screen from getting too busy. These are limited, so use them with discretion.

Be sure to pick them up any time you see them on screen! You can usually find them either by killing specific enemies or blowing up chunks of the terrain.

Clint, Annie, and Bullet can get limited-time modifiers for their weaponry. This can include a machine gun for faster damage, a shotgun for a broader range of damage, a grenade launcher for big and heavy damage, a laser gun for some precise spicy damage, and a harmless pop gun designed just to screw with you. All have a limited ammo account (around 50 for everything), so use (or deplete) wisely!

The machine gun, shotgun, grenade launcher, and laser gun will all appear on screen as an icon with a single letter for their ammo type (M, S, G, and L, respectively.) A randomized weapon (including potentially the pop gun!) comes out of these:

Everyone has a green meter on their HUD.

This builds up as they hit and kill enemies. When it maxes out, this triggers the Vulcan Cannon. This weapon not only deals massive damage on hit, but it also makes your character invulnerable. It will run out of steam within a few seconds, so don't be too reliant on that status. But, it can help in a pinch.

Everything past that? It's standard video game stuff, ya know? Memorize waves. Endure a minute or so of gunplay to get to the next boss. Learn their special moves. Find the glowing weak point. Crack it open. Regular Peppy Hare behavior.

Honestly, getting a handle on your offense style and movement capabilities is most of the challenge. The weird little movement ticks were what caught me off guard. I would be studying what few YouTube videos I could pull up for this game, stop, then go "Wait, what? I can do that?" before booting the game up and doing exactly what I saw. Like, I didn't even know how to fire my goddamn gun right. I didn't even think about holding my Fire button! I just went into rapid tapping! That's how far behind I was in all of this!

Having said that, you may want to remap your controller to something like this:

(Buttons pictured correspond to an Xbox 360 controller.)

It'll allow you to keep spraying bullets with the back of your thumb joint, then kick in jumps or dodges as needed with the front of thumb.

As far as other issues go? I would have liked having some kind of screen select or boss rush for practicing. (I suppose just playing the game is practice enough. Still, I would have liked to focus on a few trouble spots at my leisure.) I know some people in the forums for this game on Steam were disappointed that the multiplayer function was local co-op only, but man, I can't imagine what a mess the net code and rollback situation for this kind of game would have been like. Especially, when you live in the middle of Fuckoff, Iowa and the really cool players are out in South Korea. I guess people out here do okay with whatever flavor of "Call of Duty" is available, but those games are also far more forgiving when it comes to injury and death. It's hard to get people recruited for this kind of abuse.

Although, I could see my dad playing this. Maybe just once!

Look, this game isn't for everybody. I get it. It’s a tough cookie. But, I think "Wild Guns Reloaded" deserves more than for half of its players to give up on it within 0.3 seconds of their first death. It's a wonderfully constructed game, and there's a lot of logic underpinning its challenges. It does require some gumption, analytical skills, and reflexes to push past the worst the game throws at you, but it's not insurmountable! Hell, the game gives you infinite continues! You just gotta grit your teeth and get in there!

Hell, I got my first game clear in under four hours of playing! It can be done, and maybe even in a reasonable amount of time! (Though, maybe keep your playing sessions under an hour and a half to give your hands a break.)

If you feel like you could use a waltz with a Winchester, "Wild Guns Reloaded" is currently available on Steam for $14.99. You may want to wait for a sale, if you're feeling iffy on it. Fine. Reasonable. Definitely more so than the average going price of ~$250.00 for the original SNES game. I might be a sucker for the retro market, but damn it. Even I've got to put my foot down every once in a while. Especially, when an affordable upgrade is available!

Life is hard. Sometimes, people just want to work on their cutesy little gardens and snuggle with their video game spouses. Get through the sadness softly. There's room for that in this world. Hell, there should be more room for it, if we're being honest.

But, uh…I prefer having a hearty digital ass-kicking instead. Even when neither the computer nor I know whose ass is going to get kicked.