Wild Bastards review

What is it? A hybrid mix of shooter and strategy with critters to spare.

Expect to pay £27.79 / $29.74

Release date September 12, 2024

Developer Blue Manchu

Publisher Maximum Entertainment

Reviewed on Windows 10, AMD Ryzen 5 5600X Six Core CPU, 16GB RAM, Nvidia Geforce RTX 3060

Steam Deck Verified

Link Official site

It's dusk in a one-horse town, and that one horse is Sarge, a bipedal stallion carrying a lever rifle. As he scans the street for targets, a sniper wearing a monocle breaks the silence. «What precisely are you s'posed to be?», he yells in a clipped English accent.

It's the last thing the hunter ever says. The jibe gives away his location in the dark—behind the belltower, up on the church roof. Sarge closes the distance in seconds. Even on two legs, he gallops faster than any human. Seconds after that, the showdown is over. Up on the tactical map, Sarge is back on his own horse—best not to think too hard about that one—and riding off to his next encounter. This is the one-two punch of Wild Bastards—part FPS, part strategy game with the DNA of XCOM.

Sarge belongs to a gaggle of outlaws who start the game on the back hoof. In fact, as Wild Bastard begins, there are only two left—the 11 others hunted down and murdered by Jebediah Chaste and his cruel offspring. As his name suggests, Chaste objects to the sort of wildness Sarge and his ilk represent—enforcing a humancentric servitude throughout the expanse of space he oversees.

Thankfully for the Bastards, a legendary and enigmatic starship named the Drifter swoops in to save them. Nestled in its metallic bosom, you set out across the stars to find and resurrect the rest of the gang. Every sector of space you enter is like a roguelike run, in which you navigate between nodes representing shipwrecks and celestial bodies, trying to make it to the end and rescue a friend. Should all your Bastards be injured, you'll be returned to the start of that sector.

That's just the uppermost layer, however. Every time you