Six-Guns Review: One huge, free Wild West game on Windows Phone 8

This week, the massive open up world Grand Theft Automobile 5 launched on consoles. Sadly, Rockstar has yet to port whatever of its excellent mobile Yard Theft Auto titles to Windows Telephone. But thanks to Gameloft, we do have i open up world game on Windows Phone 8: Six-Guns. Of course, Half dozen-Guns takes its inspiration from the Wild Due west-themed Read Dead Redemption, merely information technology'southward still the closest thing to GTA in the mobile Xbox lineup.

Six-Guns is a free to play game – a payment model that tin can be a approving or a curse. Is this one of Gameloft's complimentary to play successes like UNO & Friends or a greedy failure like Real Soccer 2022? Read on for our verdict…

Wild Wild West

While Half-dozen-Guns is plainly based on Read Dead Redemption, information technology focuses far less on story. The scattering of story missions it does accept were originally added via updates to the original iOS version. The story scenes do come to life via digital comic-mode animations and voice acting, at to the lowest degree.

What Six-Guns lacks in narrative, it makes up for in sheer abundance of missions. The game's two large maps are dotted with glowing hotspots that trigger these missions. Missions come in several varieties, a sampling of which I'll list now:

• Defense: Guard a location against oncoming enemies either for a set time or a specific number of waves of enemies.
• Offense: Take out all of the enemies in a location.
• Racing: At that place are actually 2 types of horse races. The commencement, and most fun simply pits the role player against three AI racers. These racers work well when you don't feel like engaging in combat. The second requires players to shoot a certain number of targets while also passing through checkpoints within a time limit. Unfortunately, the aiming is so bad (which we'll get to in a bit) that it makes hitting the targets under time pressure a complete chore.
• Sniping: Requires a sniper burglarize, of which there is only one non-premium selection. Sentinel a spot and look for a courier to deliver goods to the smuggler hiding behind a wall. Considering of the bad aiming and super depression windows of opportunity to hitting the target(s), the sniping mission is ridiculously hard.
• Crypt killing: For some reason, Six-Guns has a lot of supernatural enemies like werewolves, From Dusk Till Dawn-manner monstrous vampires, and flying witches. In this mission type, you'll navigate a maze-similar crypt and defeat all of its unholy inhabitants forth the way. I really savour the brew-upwardly of Wild Due west and monsters, only the witches accept an obnoxious habit of getting stuck inside of walls, often making them unkillable and forcing a mission failure.
• Rescue: These some in ii varieties. In the more interesting one, players must locate and then escort one or more maidens safely out of a vampire's crypt.
• Shooting gallery: Fun but difficult due to aiming bug.

Complete a mission to become gold and feel. When you choose to echo a mission, not only do the rewards increment, but the circular goes up and information technology gets harder likewise. A mission can have upwardly to fifty rounds, which would have hours to become through. That's the brilliance of Six-Guns' pattern – the multi-round missions give information technology tons and tons of replay value. Oh, and there are non-repeatable collectible missions besides.

Controls and aiming

Six-Guns' more often than not controls intuitively, just like whatever of Gameloft's non-FPS tiles. You walk with a virtual stick, use a fire button to shoot, an aim push for fine aiming, and a whorl button for dodging. Tapping the gun icon at the elevation of the screen reloads, while swiping it changes guns.

Being a western-themed game, the hero can likewise ride horses! Just press the horse button to whistle for your horse and instantly mount information technology. Riding gets you everywhere faster and you don't even have to worry about existence thrown to your death like in real life.

While the general controls all work well, aiming is problematic. Much of the time, you'll go past with the lock-on help. Once you've locked on to an enemy, you tin just plug away at them unless the lock gets broken. But fine aiming is simply horrendous. The reticle just moves manner besides far no matter how lightly yous slide your finger.

The jumpy aiming seems to stem from the game's low frame rate. Similar all of Gameloft'south 3D Windows Telephone 8 titles, Six-Guns' frame rate is somewhere around fifteen-xx frames per second. That'south playable, but xxx FPS is what nosotros consider the low end of smooth. With so many frames skipped all the fourth dimension, aiming at but the right target can be a real crapshoot.

Gratis to play foibles

We've already detailed the game's complete array of In-App Purchases and evaluated their usefulness. The question now is how much all those IAPs hurt the game.

IAPs aren't limited to just vanity items and weapons. Enemies don't drop ammo; you accept to buy information technology with gilt. And you can't carry around limitless supplies of ammo, either. Each batch of bullets takes up a separate space in the player's inventory. Additional slots toll gold. Neither of these elements actually brings the game down also much. Missions and enemy kills provide more than enough gold for bullets. Handbag slots will require some grinding for golden, but yous're never short for missions to grind.

Less forgivably, wellness refills cost premium currency. Histrion health recharges over time, but non during missions. To refill during a mission, you lot'll need one of those costly wellness bottles. They tin can be won from the daily lottery, only unless y'all abuse the time changing fob yous'll seldom have any bottles on paw. Bluntly, either health should recharge during missions or bottles should cost gold.

The game's store also sells a variety of guns, clothing (armor), and horses for exorbitant quantities of premium currency. This doesn't hurt the gameplay in and of itself (exterior of multiplayer), but the prices fall pretty far on the greedy side. Gameloft has priced the best guns and outfit at $50 or higher in hopes that a few whales (large IAP spenders) will buy them. But it would exist more reasonable to price those items closer to $10. So non-insane players could justify the purchase, which would probably atomic number 82 to more sales overall.

Multiplayer

Half-dozen-Guns' online multiplayer way is also affected by those IAPs. See, whatever guns and clothing the player purchases in single-thespian (premium or not) can be used in multiplayer. Buy good equipment and you lot'll tear through players with lesser stuff. Apparently the publisher's promise is that players volition spend money to gain a competitive advantage, only that's bad game blueprint.

All the same, multiplayer is pretty fun as long as you don't run across somebody with a crazy practiced weapon. Multiplayer only offers one game type - capture the flag, and only 2 maps, which feels anemic. But at to the lowest degree there are tons of people playing at all hours, attributable to the game existence free and running on 512 MB devices.

Two annoying multiplayer bugs: sometimes you'll repeatedly neglect to connect whenever you endeavor to create or join a game. Closing the game by exiting from the title and relaunching seems to fix the connexion issues for a while.

The less severe issues involves weapon option. For some reason, you tin can but select between a couple of the guns in your inventory during multiplayer. To switch to any other weapon, you'll need to open the shop and equip the gun from there.

Achievements

Nosotros're running long here, so I'll just impact on the game'southward almost challenging Accomplishment: '100% Completion.' It requires players to not only trounce every mission but also EVERY Round of every mission. That will pretty much take forever, which isn't a bad affair if yous enjoy the game. But information technology could be frustrating if yous're unable to complete certain missions like the sniping ones. Perhaps the Windows eight version will help there…

Overall Impression

Half dozen-Guns comes dangerously close to being unforgivably greedy thanks to the wellness bottles costing money and the sky-high prices of premium items. Just you CAN get by without health bottles for the most part, and you don't need those expensive weapons and clothing. Look by those things and you've got a vast game just overflowing with a variety of missions to complete. A player could spend goose egg and get a hundred hours out of the game, easily.

If yous actually like the game and want to support Gameloft, I recommend buying a piffling golden or a permanent wellness upgrade since those are priced somewhat fairly. But the cool affair about free to play is that people who don't similar the game or its IAP prices don't need to drop a cent on it.

I love Six-Guns (other than its erratic aiming) and can't expect for the impending Windows eight version. Thanks to deject saving support, we should exist able to hop back and along between both platforms at our leisure.

• Six-Guns – Windows Phone viii, including 512MB devices – 436 MB – Gratuitous – Store Link

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Source: https://www.windowscentral.com/six-guns-wp8-review

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