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dkirschner's Lead and Gold (PC)

[November 13, 2010 05:16:01 AM]

Steam had a 'free frontiers weekend,' where we could play Lead and Gold and Shattered Horizon for free. I took a little bit of advantage and played around with Lead and Gold first. It's a wild-west themed team shooter, like Team Fortress 2 but with 4 complementary classes, each with their own unique team buff and type of gun and special ability. For example, my favorite was the trapper. She's a sniper with a raccoon hat who gives I think an accuracy or critical hit buff to teammates in range. Her special ability is to lay down bear traps. My favorite moment in the game was playing with the trapper. I perched on a balcony and killed 5 or so enemies in a row when one ran out of the doorway onto the balcony. I handily shot him dead and then had an 'Aha!' moment. I laid a bear trap in front of the door. The guy came back, felt some pain and went down, when I shot him. I laid another trap and killed another would-be assassin. It was really cool and I felt really smart.

Lead and Gold has an interesting third-person off-center perspective. I thought it would be weird not being first person, or at least third-person center like normal, but I got used to it almost instantly. You still fire down the middle, and it actually kind of opens up the screen a bit having your character off to the side. The gunplay itself reflects the setting. It's not as frantic a game as most shooters, which is probably one reason I liked it as much as I did. The gameplay is basic team shooter stuff with the wild west twist. So there's deathmatch, team deathmatch, capture the flag (or sack of gold), defend the control point (or sacks of gold), take as many (sacks of gold) to your base as you can within the time limit, and demolition, which doesn't involve sacks of gold, but does involve dynamite, another olde time staple. While you're carrying the heavy loot, you move slower and can't shoot so it's up to your teammates to protect you. Unfortunately, there were very few people online playing, even on the free weekend. There were usually 10 or 15 servers online when I was logging on, and there was a big lag beast it seemed like, everywhere.

There were a couple other game mechanics I liked more or less. One is this last stand idea that Call of Duty and some other shooters have adopted. When you get shot, as long as you aren't absolutely pummeled, you remain alive enough to pull out your pistol and try for revenge until the other team realizes you aren't dead yet and shoot you again. I always had a hard time noticing if someone was really dead or not. By the end of the weekend, after spending maybe 2 hours total on the game, I was getting the hang of double-checking for movement after I shot someone. It sucked to 'kill' someone, turn around and then you be the one to actually die. When you die or go to last stand, your teammates can actually bring you back right there by interacting with you. I found that either people don't know they can do this or they don't care. I never once received any help! I did revive others though. When you die, you either spawn at your base or at a mobile spawn point that one teammate can carry around on their backs. This would also have been cooler without so much lag and if people were actually using it strategically, to push forward in domination or something. I don't have too high esteem for the few players I played with. They were in general really bad, and I know that because I am not great at shooters, and I was kicking ass. There is also a rank system where you accumulate experience and ranks as you kill enemies and take objectives and things. It's map specific, so your rank resets after each match, and I'm not quite sure what it matters. My guess is it increases accuracy and other stats. Either that or it's simply cosmetic to psych out opponents.

The maps are very nice and fun. There are a lot of places for sniping, multiple paths everywhere, lots of height levels, like stories of buildings and rooftops, places for close-quarters combat in buildings and alleyways, and so on. The two maps I played the most were a saloon town and like a mining quarry with a giant bridge. They were excellent and I wonder what others are like.

The game also unfortunately enjoyed crashing to my desktop on occasion. Still, I had a whole lot of fun with the game. I just wish more people had been playing it because I doubt I would ever buy a shooter with less than 1000 players online on a free weekend. There's no single player component either, no story, so it would only be an online thing. Yeah, so too bad, because it's a fun game. I realized at some point that I'd been smiling the whole time I was playing.