A Fistful of Gun

A Fistful of Gun
pros:
//fast game with modern day graphics with easy controls that moves from location A to B to C and so on
//good amount of action and special effects
cons:
//some characters have weird controls
//a lot of difficult battles
//some characters are better than others
//enemies one shot kill you
//often too many enemies spawn constantly
//not enough time to evade enemy attacks

//good game
Personal Suggested Purchase Price: $0.49 Or Less During Sale

⣿⣿⡻⠿⣳⠸⢿⡇⢇⣿⡧⢹⠿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣾⣿⡇⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⡐⣯⠁ ⠄⠄
⠟⣛⣽⡳⠼⠄⠈⣷⡾⣥⣱⠃⠣⣿⣿⣿⣯⣭⠽⡇⣿⣿⣿⣿⣟⢢⠏⠄ ⠄
⢠⡿⠶⣮⣝⣿⠄⠄⠈⡥⢭⣥⠅⢌⣽⣿⣻⢶⣭⡿⠿⠜⢿⣿⣿⡿⠁⠄⠄
⠄⣼⣧⠤⢌⣭⡇⠄⠄⠄⠭⠭⠭⠯⠴⣚⣉⣛⡢⠭⠵⢶⣾⣦⡍⠁⠄⠄⠄⠄
⠄⣿⣷⣯⣭⡷⠄⠄⢀⣀⠩⠍⢉⣛⣛⠫⢏⣈⣭⣥⣶⣶⣦⣭⣛⠄⠄⠄⠄⠄
⢀⣿⣿⣿⡿⠃⢀⣴⣿⣿⣿⣎⢩⠌⣡⣶⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣆⠄⠄⠄
⢸⡿⢟⣽⠎⣰⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢀⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣦⠄⠄
⣰⠯⣾⢅⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡄⠄
⢰⣄⡉⣼⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⠄
⢯⣌⢹⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠄
⢸⣇⣽⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠄
⢸⣟⣧⡻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣧⡻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠄
⠈⢹⡧⣿⣸⠿⢿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡿⠗⣈⠻⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⡇⠄
⠄⠘⢷⡳⣾⣷⣶⣶⣶⣶⣶⣾⣿⣿⢀⣶⣶⣶⣾⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⠄
⠄⠄⠈⣵⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⢸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠄⠄
⠄⠄⠄⠸⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠘⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⣿⠇⠄⠄

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

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.

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:

• 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.

A Fistful of Gun 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 tried 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.

Score: 4.5/10

https://www.imlgames.com/a-fistful-of-gun/

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

This game is just unplayable...

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.

I was looking forward to playing Fistful Of Gun, but it ended up having dry and repeitive gameplay. The arcade mode was the most fun bit, but the difficulty curve was waaaayyy too high. Sound track was perfectly matched to the style of the game, but wasn't enough to save it.
57/100
Fun for an hour or two. Leaves you wanting something with more meat and story.

An awesome Shmup. It's tough, it's fun, I love the graphic style and it's 4 player online/offline coop. Eleven different characters and they each have a unique way of shooting. That's what grabs me, no two characters play alike. No "hold down fire button to shoot",

Example, one guy uses a quick draw revolver so you have to press the right buttons in order to keep shooting, the longer you chain the buttons the faster and further the bullets fly, while another guy plays like bomber man. You run around dropping explosive barrels that can kill you as well. Also, once you get upgrades sometimes it can change your shooting mechanics. Cool singleplayer too with crazy bosses.

I am sad that this little arcade didn't caught on. There are parts of it I think is very broken but nothing a good discount can solve. This is the perfect game I could've give a half thumbs up.

I would currently not recommend this to anyone. The game is very buggy. Tried to play with a group of friends and had issues with picking characters and moving past the first stage of the game. We're really excited to play if the bugs can be worked out!

It Could be a great western roguelike game, which could be a rare thing; but unfortunately its a waste of money and I just refunded it. The reason is bad contol of most characters and bad balancing of most parts, but the most important reason is game design errors. well I never could pass the first boss, because most of selectable characters will die with one hit. and the boss area is swarmed with enemies that will shoot at you plus a very angry boss that will take too much damage to die. This means a very hard bullet hell game like Enter the Gungeon without any abilities to dudge bullets and without cool upgrades of that game (and other roguelike classics like Binding of Isaac) and you only have one heart!!! This means hell and a boring one! Wasted potential...

Single or multiplayer this is seriously good ol' fun with your buddies, retro feel, top down, twin stick bullet hell bonanza of a game! Farmer Gnome genuinely impressed me with this title.

Each charachter offers a unique twist on gameplay with their own arsenal of firepower at their disposal which not only offers a offers you a level of replayability within the single player campaign, but also extends that replayability to arcade / multiplayer. In the hours i've played, no one game has ever been the same, or for that matter, predictable, it's a challenge every time which is something i look for in a game, aside from genuine fun i like titles that offer the player a challenge.

This is personal opinion, but i feel the game is as good as hotline miami, slightly different art styles and even different style of game sure, but at their core, they are as good as each other but hotline miami is more predictable.

I like twin stick shooters and this one hits the mark for me. Good game.

Yeah this game is BRUTAL, its not just that you die in ONE HIT *Almost everyone does except when they don't later*, You also have to contend with: Random Chance deciding to pound you like a 5 Dollar Mistress, the Sheriff Lying to you, *I am carrying an explosive Pinata and WHY THE FUCK ARE YOU SHOOTING AT ME! I'VE ALREADY PAID THE PRICE!* and other such dangers.
Why do I recommend this you may ask? The game is VARIED and it has co-op. Each of the gunslingers play different, some have similar firing schemes but need to reload more or less, some actually fire using buttons instead of the sticks. To say more will spoil so discover them for yourself *Or play Arcade mode and try them all out but still discover their capabilities*

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

This game is fun enough for an upvote from me. There is nothing drastically new here, as it is a fairly standard top-down arcade shooter. One thing it does nicely, is have a wide variety of wildly different playable characters. They all control quite differently and have a place in the combat. There are also enough game modes to keep you going for quite a while. The online leaderboards really add encouragement to have 9 people playing the game at the same time to get that number one spot.

Pros:
+9 players on the same screen!!
+Crisp graphics
+Great spaghetti western feel complete with cool camera work
+Controls are tight
+Lots of interactables in the environment
+Arcade mode is great and gives you permanent upgrades at the end of each round
+local multiplayer is a blast - really the only way to play IMO

Cons:
-Nothing drastically novel is brought to the table, what you see is what you get
-Some of the controller setup options are strange - like 'start+back' is used to reverse out of a menu (and I had to search to figure out how to do this)
-It can be quite difficult at times (one hit kills, unless you have a horse - then you get an extra hit, but that is really all you have as far as defense)

This game is a good deal of fun if you have local friends to play couch co-op or versus. Price is right, too.

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!

Booze, hallucinogens, and j1zz in the wild west!

Gameplay's a cross between a SHMUP and a twinstick shooter. Each character has a unique playstyle and control scheme. Some are dpad/keyboard only. Some are mouse+keyboard or twinstick. One guy requires you to play a DDR minigame to shoot.

The single player is rogue-lite. You have choices such as: where to travel, partaking in peyote trips, robbing people, rescuing them.

There's boss fights and a cast of unlockable characters. Funny and very replayable.

Multiplayer has coop Arcade mode and Versus pvp with at least 4 player support.

This game is a lot of fun! Servers are low on people (for now at least, fingers crossed) so it's hard to find people, but going solo is still tons of fun. It interesting trying to figure out each characters strengths and weakness.

The art style is fantastic and unlike other games similar to this one, i can actually see where my character is most of the time without losing him in the sea of moving AI. Can't wait until I get into a 9-player game it will probably be epic.

Fast paced and challenging. If you're looking for an easy game this isn't it. Finally one-upping your high score is very rewarding in itself, even though I kind of get discouraged when the highest score is over 1 million (mine=79,000 :( ) Overall great game and I'm interested to see what kind of updates this game will get!

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edit: After several months and a few more hours of playing the game I have sadly changed my verdict to do not recommend. If you have friends to play this game with I can assure you you will probably have a great time, but I know most people that check out this game have solo-play in mind.

In my old review I mentioned that this is not an easy game. I thought it was a challenge, but I thought I was only bad at it because I was new to the game. Now that i've had time to play the game and get experienced I am finding that this game is way too hard if you're playing solo. I can't even get past the first boss in story mode. I can usually get to the boss only losing two lives at most, but once I hit the boss level its game over from there. The problem is that there are too many squishy enemies to kill while having to dodge the boss. And they keep coming. I can't focus on the boss for more than a couple seconds without having to redirect my attention to the horde of ads shooting at me.

That is my main gripe with the game. The only coop game I was able to get into when the game first came out was a blast. I had an amazing time, but I can't find a coop match anymore so I'm forced to play solo. I hate to give this game a negative review since it had so much potential and the developer is such a great person, but it had to be done.

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.