A Fistful of Gun Reviews

[h1]This game is just unplayable...[/h1] I hate to give a bad review for a game that could be just amazing, but I found it more frustrating than fun. I'm not gonna lie, I played the game for about a hour, and that was enough to get pissed with the mechanics, lack of a good aiming system and unbalanced characters. I am familiar with bullet hell games such as Enter the Gungeon and Nuclear Throne, but instead of these two, Fistful of Gun promisses a good western bullet hell, but deliver a frustrating experience of dying a lot, missing shots, weird controls and characters that are actually not good at all. If the developers fix some of the issues, I might consider changing the review for a good one. But for now, I think the game is unplayable. [b]Pros[/b] - Western themed bullet hell shooter - Cool power ups, such as the booze - Good pixel arts [b]Cons[/b] - Weird mechanics and controls - Horrible aiming system - Weak and unbalanced classes/characters - Too pricey

that moment when the devs subvert your expectations and now you are reading this because I am not good at this game either. 8/10

A railroad tycoon has destroyed everything you hold dear in his quest to rule the west. Make use of everything you can from Booze and Peyote to Bombs and Bullets as you seek revenge against the Tyrannical Clayton Boon, Railroad Tycoon!

I saw this game on the front page of Steam and being a sucker for westerns I just had to try it out, and boy am I glad I did. As for the gameplay, it is quite fun and generally controls quite well, except for a few of the characters which can be a bit awkward at least on KB+mouse. I think the biggest selling point of the game is it's eleven unique characters, which each have a very different style and are all fun to play; chances are you will find at least one character you enjoy playing. You can play either story, arcade, or versus mode. Story is single player, and has some rogue-like elements, it's actually something like Binding of Issac in that you have to get through X number of squares to reach a boss, and you have to defeat a number of bosses before you reach the final boss, picking up and buying powerups along the way. As you'd probably expect, the story is about as simple as it gets, it is a standard western revenge plot: the head of a railroad company has wronged you and now you are out for blood. Personally I think most of the replayability lies in the arcade mode, where you must clear out as many of the randomized areas you can either by yourself, with friends, or online. As long as there continues to be an online community I think this mode could have some lasting appeal. As for versus mode, I honestly haven't played it yet, though it seems like it could easily fall prey to unbalanced characters. The art style in this game is fantastic, pixel graphics have been done to death at this point but the visuals of this game manage to capture the aesthetic of spaghetti westerns very well, and considering how rare western games are, even in the realm of indie games, I think the style really holds its own. As for the music, from what I've heard I'm not too impressed honestly, just seems like a bit of a mish-mash between retro game music and Ennio Morricone, but it really doesn't have a style all its own like in say Luckslinger, another indie western-themed game, in any case this isn't that big of a deal. My Verdict: For a little over the price of a movie, I think you'll probably get your value and then some out of this game, especially if you enjoy westerns or top down shooters.

Another game that is shit. Control wise it's a mess, not to mention the hitbox! This game tried to be an updated version of Gunsmoke, the 1985 arcade game made by Capcom but it fails miserably. Even the NES version of Gunsmoke has responsive controls and hitbox, and we're talking about a game that was made 38 years ago. The pixel art could also be better. Overall, a lazy game. I bought for cheap in a pack of a bunch of shit games I won't ever play. Wanna be a cowboy? Go play the original Gunsmoke on Capco Arcade Classics, or dust off your NES cartridge. This game is completely useless.

an arcade game with full 11 player coop and versus (mayhem) local and online!!! ,with the difficulty of old school arcade games , with a spaghetti western theme and 11 different antiheroes with different weapons and abilities do you want to ask for more ? ok then it has a story too: A Fistful of Gun is about railroad baron Clayton Boon, who has signed a contract with the devil to obtain wealth and might, because of which he is building a doomed track to the depths of hell, connecting it to the overworld. What he did not expect, however, is that an old shaman is living there, raising shootists from the dead to fight their way through the Wild West, killing the enemies they encounter and stop Boon in three acts of pure action!!! the fun and the replayability with friends in this game is enormous!!! i strongly recommend it when it is on discount 8/10

A Fistful of Gun is a coop top-down shooter with bullet-hell elements and a western theme, which kind of shoots way off target in many regards. The art design is convoluted, effects are spectacularly screen overflowing in a way that nothing is perceptible anymore and the gameplay is kind of meh. To be honest even more than meh as hitbox detection and controls are bordering on being abysmal. I'd rather play Westerado, "12 is better than 6" or Hard West than to spend any more time with A Fistful of Gun after I soldiered through completion. It's just kind of off and not even the coop can save this title from being a lot worse than most other similar games. Cannot recommend.

A Fistful of Gun is an homage to the western genre. Story: A long time ago, there lived an evil railroad baron Clayton Boon, the most evil man in the land that might have even made the deal with the devil. He's been known for killing anyone that opposed his railroad, but he didn't count on a rag tag group of people he crossed to come for their vengeance. That's about all you get in the story department when it comes to A Fistful of Gun, which is delivered to you on a splash screen at the beginning of the game. The writing is minimal, but it works fine for the most part and definitely nails the tone of the western genre. Graphics: A Fistful of Gun is also really pleasing to look at and nails the western look. The color palette of the environments you visit is really great and it changes on the time of day as well which is really just awesome, especially when night rolls around. The character models are also really cool with many of the main characters you can choose having their own unique and cool look. However there is one thing that I really find annoying and that is when you get into some of the heavier fights, you will be swarmed with tons of enemies and them spamming bullets at you will make the action really hard to follow and that is even more clear when you get to the boss fights. Audio: The music is definitely top notch and it has a great western inspired score, that is also heavily inspired by Sunset Riders. When the action gets hectic and you get into insane firefights that Sunset Riders influence becomes more clear and it's some really catchy music. The sound effects are also really decent, albeit when you fight massive waves of enemies and there's a hail of fire the sound effects stack on top of each other and it gets really annoying to listen to. This is rare however as these massive barrage of enemies rarely happen, but when it does holy hell prepare your ear drums. Gameplay: This is where A Fistful of Gun completely derails. On the surface it plays like a twin stick shooter, where you go through many areas fighting enemies trying to reach the boss of that act. The game consists of three acts and each act consists of 13 miles which act as levels, a single screen is one mile in game and once you clear a screen you are often given a few different directions for you to choose to go to. Before you begin the game you get to pick your character which there's 11 to choose from, however most are downright useless and honestly make the game even harder to play. I tinkered around with pretty much all of them and found a majority of them basically unplayable. The reason is because the weapons that are unique for them all have some really big downsides. For example of the best guys has a chain gun, which doesn't have an ammo counter, but it will overheat pretty fast so if you get swamped with enemies you can say goodbye to one or maybe even more of your lives. The controls are also really slippery and the aiming is basically inconsistent and it got to the point where a few of my runs were ended purely because the controls messed me up and got me to run into enemies or when I tried to reload a gun it simply would not load in bullets which again got me killed. Another massive problem is the games insane difficulty. When I first started playing I could get through Act 1 without losing a single life, it was difficult, but doable. However as soon as you reach Act 2 the game turns up the dial up, straight up to 20 and basically starts spitting in your face. A lot of the routes are filled with danger like explosives, trains and others that will make your journey to Clayton a pain. Image playing a level where there's 30 enemies on a single screen, with their bullets flying everywhere, all of those other environmental dangers you have to keep an eye out for and the fact that you die in a single hit and if you lose your lives it's back to the start with you. It's a brutal game, but it does have crutches alongside that definitely help you make the journey much more passable. When you kill enemies they will drop money which you can use to upgrade your weapons to give them better stats like more damage or faster reloads, potions that give different effects (but most being pretty much useless) and of course the one that made the game much more passable, a card game that allows you to win extra lives. Verdict: A Fistful of Gun is a rare misfire Devolver Digital has put out and even then it's not insanely bad, but just really not that good either. I feel like it's fun, but all of the issues, make it a painful experience to the point where I was more angry than having fun throughout the 2 hour campaign. I do suggest checking it out, but only on a really heavy discount. Final Rating: 5.5/10 Pros: + Art style is great + Awesome soundtrack + Does provide quite a lot of play value Cons: - Controls are awful - Difficulty gets insane - Most of the playable characters are completely useless - A few of the routes are basically run enders If you liked this review please consider following our groups and curator pages at https://steamcommunity.com/groups/completingthebacklog and https://steamcommunity.com/groups/ImperialReviews

When I purchased this game to play locally with some friends years ago, we didn't end up playing it for long and quickly moved on to other games. I recently revisited this game again with my brother, and I immediately remembered why we stopped playing it years ago. This game has quite a few flaws: [list] [*] The controls are terrible. You're given a selection of 11 different characters to play as and they all have different control schemes. However, many of these characters are extremely hard to use, and there were probably only 4 or 5 that gave me any sort of chance to complete the game, as the rest were laughably bad. A bunch of them only shoot the direction you're looking with no way to lock the direction, some use weird delayed weapons which make it impossible to hit anything, and some force you to play a weird game of "match the button" or it just doesn't shoot. Many of these feel extremely gimmicky and just aren't good. [*] The character "The 13th" is way stronger than all the other characters, since it can take up to 9 hits and shoots up to nine bullets at once. Someone was always this character when we played and they almost always lasted the longest. It wasn't even close. [*] The game is very RNG based. How well you do depends entirely on the types of rooms the game gives you. If you don't get enough money or enough shops to buy upgrades, you're going to have a much harder time. My brother and I sometimes got runs where we got around 8-12 shop visits, and then others where we got almost none. [*] It's very hard to see what's going on, as everything is very small, and there's often a lot going on on the screen. The strange filters that get applied when you drink alcohol make this even worse. [*] The movement isn't very satisfying and it often feels like you're fighting against the game. Many characters move too slowly, and "The 13th" has an ability that make him move way too fast, which is also impossible to control. [*] Very little is explained and the game just expects you to figure out what the different symbols, effects, dangers, etc. are. [*] It's not very long. It took my brother and I under 3 hours to complete the story mode of the game once we revisited it. The other game modes seemed to be lesser versions of the story mode, which we didn't find worth much time. [*] There are some extremely inappropriate jokes that just happen out of nowhere. The game doesn't really sell itself to be some kind of game edgy, crude game, and there's nothing to warn you about this, so these extremely inappropriate jokes were very unexpected, uncomfortable, and unwanted. [/list] The game does have a decent art style (apart from being too small), ran fairly well (didn't encounter any major bugs or issues), and my brother and I did find ourselves having some fun occasionally (although a lot of it came from laughing at how bad the game was). Unfortunately, I don't have anything else positive to say about this game. [b]TL;DR[/b] This game has terrible controls and balance, is extremely RNG based, has tiny graphics which are hard to see, doesn't explain anything, is very short, and has some extremely inappropriate jokes. I really didn't enjoy this game, so I wouldn't recommend it.

[i]A Fistful of Gun[/i] demonstrates both the unrestricted and undisciplined extremes of indie development. Eleven different characters, each with their own control scheme? Nine-player co-op? Sleek presentation that blends Western tropes with pixel art? Sounds amazing! Too bad no one even [i]tried[/i] to balance any of the characters, items, or upgrades. Too bad everything is a one-hit kill, and the screen is extremely cluttered even in single-player. Too bad the versus mode is poorly designed to the point of insignificance. There’s a healthy number of fun ideas here – the roguelike-style story mode includes playable peyote trips and a sheriff who punishes lawbreakers with explosive piñatas, for example. Without some semblance of conscious design, however, it’s all just a grab bag of mechanics rather than a cohesive experience. [b]Score: 4.5/10[/b] https://www.imlgames.com/a-fistful-of-gun/