Far Far West

My Saturday-night co-op group burned through our first three sessions of Far Far West before anyone stopped to ask what we were actually doing. That's a good sign. This is a 1-4 player online co-op shooter from the eight-person team at Evil Raptor, structured around bounty contracts you grab from the Town Sheriff, drop into hostile frontier zones to complete, and (mostly) extract from alive. Think Helldivers 2's mission rhythm transplanted into a neon-soaked Wild West full of robot cowboys, skeleton gunfighters, charging bulls, and undead liches - then add spellcasting on top of all that gunplay. The combat system is where Far Far West earns its reputation. You are not just pointing revolvers at ghosts. There are five elemental spell trees - fire, electricity, acid, voodoo, and cactus - each starting with basic projectiles and mines but scaling into beam attacks and health-drain abilities. The real hook is that spell combos stack: the order and overlap of abilities cast by multiple players creates entirely new effects, which means a coordinated four-person squad can trigger chain reactions a solo player simply cannot replicate. Each player brings limited spell slots per run, so role distribution actually matters. One person goes heavy on crowd control, another on boss pressure, and suddenly a mission that looked like chaos becomes a story worth retelling the next morning. Alongside spells, the on-foot movement - jump chaining and air dashes that let you glide across maps at speed - feels snappy and responsive in a way that keeps combat from ever going flat. Missions also throw in light minigames, like herding robot cows or memory-style interactions, that give the squad something to argue about beyond just shooting everything. For casual and accessibility-minded players, the approachability bar is low in a good way. Runs scale to your party size, difficulty adjusts for solo play, objectives are clearly signposted, and missions clock in anywhere from ten to thirty minutes depending on how much your group wants to explore. There is no punishing XP lockout on failed runs - you always come away with something. The progression system does front-load some grind in the early hours, and after fifteen or so runs the enemy variety starts to show its Early Access seams. Boss encounters are well-designed and challenging, but several are reused across different missions, which dulls the edge once you have seen them all. Evil Raptor has publicly flagged enemy roster expansion as a priority on the roadmap, which is the right call. Technically, the game is quietly impressive for a team this small. Load times are fast, the frame rate holds steady under normal conditions, and launch week aside (server traffic caused some connection hiccups early on), the experience has been stable. The one hardware caveat worth flagging: in full four-player sessions with stacked spell effects - what the community lovingly calls Yeehaw Chaos - particle density can tax mid-range systems, so lowering visual effects settings is a practical suggestion before you load up a full squad. No split-screen support is present, but online co-op with up to three friends works natively, and Steam Deck players share the same matchmaking pool as PC. The bottom line for my group is simple: this is exactly the kind of game that fills the rotation alongside Deep Rock Galactic and Helldivers 2 rather than replacing either. Solo runs are functional and scaled fairly, but the spell combo system genuinely rewards having three other people to bounce abilities off. If your crew is looking for a co-op shooter that is easy to re-enter on a Friday night, demanding enough to keep experienced players engaged for weeks, and weird enough that nobody gets bored explaining it to a newcomer - Far Far West is a serious contender right now, Early Access caveats and all.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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