Some representatives from Swedish developer Fatshark came by the TeamXbox offices for a surprise visit recently, bringing with them a bunch of laptops, each of them loaded with the forthcoming Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West. The game will be released on PC and Xbox Live Arcade in first-quarter 2010.
While we didnt get to see the XBLA version, we not only saw the game on PC, but were invited to sit and play against each other for a while. The laptops were equipped with Xbox 360 controllers, so we got a good feel for what itll be like on console. Were pretty excited by what the third-person shooter offers to players.
Lead and Gold is a multiplayer game designed for five-on-five, team vs. team action. Its a class-based game, with four archetypes as the character choices: Blaster, Deputy, Gunslinger and Trapper. In actuality, all of them are gunslingers, but each has a different default weapon as well as a special ability. The Blaster has a shotgun-like rifle, but his name comes from the ability to throw explosives. The Deputy comes with a carbine, but can tag a person for his teammates to go after and also gets increased experience points for a kill. The Gunslinger has a revolver and can fan the hammer in traditional Wild West style for fast shooting. The Trapper gets a sniper rifle for longer-distance targeting, but can also leave behind up to two steel-jaw traps to snare unsuspecting enemies.
Though I dont think our history of the Wild West had this, but each class also gets a Synergy Effect to benefit nearby teammates. The Blaster provides improved damage protection, the Deputy offers a damage bonus up to double the normal amount, the Gunslinger increases shooting accuracy and the Trapper ups the chance that a player will get a critical hit bonus. All players also deliver a slow area heal to each other, and all Synergy Effects improve as a player ranks up through experience points earned during normal gameplay.
Of course, the benefit of the Synergy Effects is meant to be inspiration for players to work together. Weve all been involved in multiplayer matches in other games that have teams, but where everyone runs on their own and theres little strategy communicated between players. Lead and Gold players, however, earn a decent reward by sticking closer to other teammates, so Fatshark hopes itll improve the collaboration.
Another teamwork builder is the fact that when youre dropped by an enemy, you arent immediately dead (much like Gears of War). You can crawl around and also use your secondary handgun to do some damage. If a teammate can get to you before you bleed out or an enemy totally puts you away, you can be revived and return to the battlefield. That keeps the game moving, but also encourages players to stick closer together. (Keep in mind, though, that a by-product of the pack mentality can also be that all of you get killed en masse by a skillful gunman.)
To further encourage the gameplay flow, Fatshark is enabling respawn at a spawn stick near a teammate. Also, matches can be hot joined, meaning itll be easy for players to join a match in progress, bumping out an AI bot who might be holding down the fort, so to speak, on the team.
Lead and Gold will have four game modes, which are pretty standard multiplayer fare, though under different names. Powderkeg has one team needing to place bombs at a couple of locations on the map, while the other team needs to defend those locations and disarm bombs if theyre planted. Conquest is a king-of-the-hill kind of mode that has each team trying to capture a series of points, while the other team is doing the same thing in the opposite direction. Greed is a capture-the-flag type of game, though with gold instead of flags that need to be brought back to the home base. Robbery is a mix of Powderkeg and Greed, where one team is trying to steal gold and plant explosives, while the other team needs to keep its gold from being taken.
The game will come with six maps, and Fatshark told us that each map will be designed to host at least two gameplay modes. Of course, theres also the potential that new maps could be offered for purchase and download after the game comes out, which will expand the playfields, and itd be possible for new gameplay modes to be offered in the same way.
Fatshark is doing its best to make Lead and Gold versatile. It can be played solo with AI bots being teammates and filling the enemy squad. The game will also balance out uneven-sized matches among multiple players. Our session was full of TeamXbox, IGN and GameSpy editors, and we had a blast as we learned the game. Its a light-on-frills contest, so, much like Battlefield 1943, it was simple to pick up and play. We didnt have a lot of time on it to learn the maps all that well, but were confident that an hour or so of play would give nearly anyone all the needed to know to not feel like a n00b.
Without a doubt, well have more on Lead and Gold as it gets closer to its release, and if the PC version is any indication as to how far along the development is, we expect it wont be all that long before its on Xbox Live Marketplace for your enjoyment.
