Before we begin this review, let’s hop into the Wayback Machine I’m borrowing from Mr. Peabody for a bit and journey back to the year 2019. See, before I joined Gaming Furever, I used to work for a now-defunct online radio station called The Cove Radio. Alongside the show I hosted called ‘The Realm Of The Metal Wolf’ - in which I played, well, heavy metal music alongside the occasional classic 80’s rock - I did video game reviews for them and I aired them live (OK, they were pre-recorded) on my show before posting them on the site. I mention this as one of the games I reviewed was a little title called Void Bastards; a game that, outside of its eye-catching title, I said was fun but very mediocre with boring gameplay and just felt unfulling. Now, here we are in 2026 and we got the official follow-up with Wild Bastards: A game that I feel is much better than Void with more enjoyable gameplay and is a much better FPS Roguelike, but still has many of the faults that plagued Void Bastards.
Yee-Haw!
I do want to start with the positives first, with the biggest being the improved gameplay loop. Unlike Void which saw you exploring mostly the same spaceships with nothing real to differentiate themselves from each other and every character you play as basically being the same, Wild Bastards sees you exploring planets of various fauna and landscapes, which alone makes this more fun and visually appealing. From snowy landscapes to moon landscapes to even desert planets, the vast amount of locations you visit are downright gorgeous, thanks in part to its comic book-like artstyle. Yes, you will see some locations repeated, depending on what planet you get, but the game has a bit of an ace up its sleeve in forms of environmental hazards. For example, one planet I visited had storms that could reign lightning down on you, hurting you as well as the enemies, giving you another hazard to avoid while hunting them down. It’s little things that make this game a step up from its predecessor in many ways. I think the only time the planets weren’t fun to explore was when night rolled around, but that was quickly fixed thanks to one Wild Bastards I unlocked, which I’ll touch on when we get to them. What really helps each planet and, for that matter, the game itself stand out is the artstyle. Like Void Bastards, it uses a cel-shaded comic book art-style reminiscent of Mike Mignola (the creator of Hellboy). I loved this artstyle in Void Bastards and I’m happy it’s back in Wild Bastards. The art-style really helps make every character in the game stand out, as well as easy to spot among the world when hunting them down and distinguish which ones take priority over the others. Sure, the animations on the reloading could’ve been slightly better, but that’s just a small nitpick and really doesn’t detract from the game.
The gameplay of Wild Bastards is where I feel this game really excels over Void Bastards. While it keeps the roguelike gameplay of the original title, here it feels less like a dungeon crawler and more akin to a game like Hunt: Showdown. That is, you spawn in a large open area and must hunt down the enemies before they turn you into more work for the local grave diggers. Unlike the last game where you only get one character to play as throughout the entire game, here you get 13 characters to choose from and each of them offers a unique weapon and special skill, sorta like the Hunters in Hunt: Showdown. I wouldn’t really call this a ‘Hero Shooter’ but it does have elements of one. For instance, there’s the first two Outlaws you get, Spider Rosa and Doc Casino. Spider Rosa comes equipped with two revolvers which she can reload each separately thanks to her four arms and her special ability allows her to throw out a ‘clone’ to distract enemies. Doc Casino, on the other side of the coin, wields a deadly double barrel shotgun and can easily clear out most enemies with his Roulette skill. In order to activate a skill, you need to find ‘Juice’, which are canteens scattered throughout each arena (of which you can store up to four) and are one-time use items. Of all 13 Outlaws, the ones I enjoyed playing as the most were The Judge, Roswell, Billy, Sarge, and Fletch. The Judge, for example, comes equipped with a powerful one-round rifle (Or multiple if you equip a mod) that can easily one-shot enemies, especially once you get three critical kills in a role which activates an even deadlier Killshot and his Judgement Time skill - which slows down time - I found to be very useful when dealing with the deadlier enemies. Billy, on the opposite end, dual wields revolvers like Spider Rosa but his ability allows him to rapidly fire them. Then there’s Fletch whose bow and arrow is basically an homing weapon as all you need to do is sight an enemy and let the arrow fly, so you can act like the cheaters in multiplayer games but legally and without the rude comments! Sarge, the cybernetic horse and probably my all time favorite in the game, comes equipped with a rifle that, like the Judge’s, can easily take out most enemies with one shot, but he has two cool abilities; the first is his ability to scan enemies and see not only their health in more detail, but pretty much everything about them as well. The second is Fortify which basically makes you invulnerable to all enemy fire, allowing you to turn the tide in your favor. Plus, he has an awesome voice as well.
But then? Then there’s Roswell, the most overpowered of the bunch. Not because of his weapon which has unlimited ammo but needs to cool off after usage, but because of his skill: Blast Off. For ten seconds, you launch into the air and slam down onto the earth below, not only stunning, but damaging ALL enemies caught by your slam. If you have two or more Blast Off skills in the wings, you can easily wipe the entire map of enemies without having to fire a single round off at all. I will freely admit I abused this guy’s skill in some areas with the more annoying enemies more often than not. That’s not to say all of the Outlaws were fun to play as I enjoyed the others as well. I do feel the only ones I found to be the less enjoyable ones were Hopalong and Kaboom, mostly due to Hopalong’s weapon being a lasso that takes forever to do damage and Kaboom’s dynamite being a bit too finicky, resulting in self-damage I didn’t want to happen. I do want to give praise to the voice acting as it’s surprisingly really good. You really do feel these misfits have been through hell and back more times then they can count, with their arguments sounding realistic(ish) at times. I will admit, though, a few characters' voices did catch me by surprise as they weren’t what I expected to hear. Billy, for example? I was expecting a deep, almost mystical voice due to his Cthulhu look to him, but instead we got, what I would guess the internet would describe as, ‘a precious cinnamon bun’ as he has this youthful and jubilant voice to him.
The same can be said about the enemy selection as there is a good selection of them to fight. From your basic gunslingers to snipers to critters, Wild Bastards is not lacking in enemy variety and I love how you can instantly tell which one takes top priority over the others, which ones can be dealt with last, and which ones will quickly go up on the Annoying ladder with how much of a pain in the rear they are. For me, those enemies were the Porcupines - which look more like spiders but whatever - and Yellowbellies, the later being able to put up a shield and has a devastating gun that can easily halve your health if you’re unlucky and the former being able to get off some truly cheap shots at you the second you hit them. However, these enemies can be easily taken out with a select Outlaw - like Rawhide can easily shoot through the Yellowbellies shields - and/or with one of the various weapon mods you can find. Now, be warned, these mods are only good for the sector you’re in as, once you beat a sector and move on, you lose everything but the Bastards and their perks they earned via leveling up, which you do the later by finding cards on various planets. Still, once you find a mod, they can really turn the tide of many battles, with my favorite being one that can turn enemies into allies, resulting in many levels where I didn’t have to fire anything other than the one bullet/arrow. There are even Tonics you can find, which can rejuvenate as well as heal fallen outlaws. But, stay on a planet for too long and trouble will come a-knocking in the form of the Princes; the children of Jebedian Chaste who is personally chasing down the Wild Bastards. These Princes are tough sons of guns and will put your skills to the test, but they can be easily overcome. Except for Jebediah who you can NOT, in any circumstance, kill at all, so the second he lands? Make like Shiny Pokemon and flee the planet, which you do via one of the beacons on the map or by a personal beacon you picked up. But don’t think these goons are easy pickings, because they aren’t in the slightest. What really surprised me during the game was the intelligence of the enemy AI as it was almost to the levels of F.E.A.R. with how smart and tactical they can be at times. From the basic stuff like hiding behind cover to more intelligent moves like flanking you and working in groups with audible callouts, which brought back memories of the Rainbow Six: Vegas series. Now, yes, there are times where the enemies can be less than smart but, 90% of the time, they are pretty intelligent, to the point where they can put up a good challenge. I also want to mention how I got a laugh at how the last enemy will actually run away and leave the arena if they realize they are the last man standing.
Well, dagnabbit…
Even with all that praise and despite many improvements, there are still some areas that Wild Bastards suffers in that I’d hope get fixed from Void Bastards. For starters, I’m not the biggest fan of the map system. While there are minor events you can visit like a starship or asteroid field, these are merely just text choices and everything you get in those sectors can be found on the planets themselves, so I found myself ignoring those most of the time. At the same time, while it’s a cool idea and feels slightly improved from Void, it really turns the non-FPS parts into stop-n-go. When you do get onto the planet's surface, another map then appears and this is when the game takes a sorta board game-like approach. After sending down either 2 or 4 Outlaws down, you then have a select number of moves to do before your turn ends, with the overall goal to reach the beacon to escape the planet, as well as collect wayward outlaws that got separated from you when you descend, which is a random occurrence. On each planet itself, there'll be shops you can visit to pick up mods, Nitro (which gives you an extra set of moves), disguises to avoid enemy patrols, and a game-breaking Emergency Beacon. I say ‘game breaking’ as, if you have one in your inventory, you can quite literally land on the planet, destroy the planet lock (which you’ll do automatically, another disappointment), and then escape. In fact, the game outright tells you that you can leave a planet whenever you want as you don’t have to get all the items. You do miss out on items like cards to level up if you escape early, but that leads to my other complaint: Leveling up seems kinda pointless.
As long as you’re not rushing into fights and, instead, acting like a hunter and using the right mods, you can easily beat every planet as a Level 1 character. Yes, leveling does give you little perks, like more health and damage, but once I saw that you only need mods that give you AI helpers, as well as how overpowered a few of the Outlaws were, I ended up ignoring the leveling up cards and just focused on surviving. I kinda wish leveling up had more stuff to give you, like maybe unlocking an alternate weapon for a character or maybe their weapon physically changing, but that’s just not the case here. Speaking of the outlaws, at random points in the game, they will randomly start feuds with each other, meaning they won’t work together at all on planets and the only way to resolve this is with a can of beans. While a good idea on paper, this ended up being one of the more frustrating elements of the game as not only are beans hard to come by in the game, but the fact that depending on who’s feuding? You could be stuck with the worst Outlaws to play as, leading to many frustrating missions. Now, I will give the game some credit in that if you end a feud and make the outlaws pals, you can get little bonuses in stages from an outlaw, like health powerups or they’ll help out in combat. Still, the feuding system, while a good idea, led to more bouts of frustration than anything.
But my biggest issue is that there really isn’t much to do in the game once you complete it which, once again like Void Bastards, the ending is just unfulfilling. Which sucks more in this case as I was actually invested in the character’s journey and wanted to see them reach their goal. I know I usually don’t focus on stories in my reviews, but I need to get this off my chest here. I won’t spoil what exactly happens, so I’ll just say it like this: At one point in the game, you unlock a certain Outlaw that gives out a new mission for them to complete, but turns out that new mission prevents them from achieving their dream goal. I don’t know the name of this trope - or if it even is one - but I hate when you’re following a character or group of characters on their path to an end goal, only for another character to join them and said “Sorry, that’s not the goal for you/us, but for someone else”. What really sucks is that once you reach said goal? You get a few cutscenes and the game just ends and you go back to the title screen. Yeah, you can replay the game on higher difficulties with some modifiers like Ironman mode, which ups the difficulty ten-fold, and you can play the newly unlocked Challenge mode or the main game with no narrative per se, but that’s it. Honestly, I was just really disappointed with how the game just ended and I really had no sudden urge to replay it. Yeah, the new modes are fun and it was nice to be able to play the story without the narrative for a bit, but I just didn’t have an urge to replay the game. I really wish the game had more stuff to do. Like, say, being able to play past the ending and keep going to explore randomly generated planets or, I don’t know, being able to fight Jebediah in an all-out gunfight. Just anything? I understand that not every game needs hours upon hours of content, but just a little something extra here would’ve been nice as there really isn’t any real reason to return to the game once you complete the story. Truth be told, I honestly felt a bit of buyer’s remorse afterwards, which rarely happens with me.
Fool’s Gold
While Wild Bastards is a step up in some areas from Void Bastards and I was enjoying my time with it, it unfortunately still suffers from many of the issues that its predecessor had as well as feeling like the worst kind of one-and-done game. It’s a real shame because, up until I hit that certain point, I was having fun playing as the Wild Bastards and enjoying unlocking the new characters! But, once that point came, all the fun just evaporated and that feeling of disappointment crept in like a rattlesnake. I do still recommend the title as there is some fun to be had, but only if you can get it on sale because its asking price of $35 USD(!!!) is not worth it for what’s on offer (Yeah, my mouth dropped at that price tag, too). I’d equate the game to those little containers of soup you can stick in a microwave: Sure it looks good and can be a nice meal, but once you’re done eating it? You don’t feel too fulfilled from it and find yourself wanting just a bit more. Again, Wild Bastards is not a BAD game. It's just a disappointing game that could’ve been better.
