Gunslingers & Zombies Review

What happens when you mix up the wild west and zombies? Red Dead Undead Nightmare! Well, no, umm what happens when you mix up the wild west, zombies and XCOM? Gunslingers & Zombies. A game formally available on Steam has now made its way to the Nintendo Switch, but is it worth your time? Or should it have been left in the graveyard?

Gunslingers & Zombies is an action-adventure strategy game hilariously mixing two beloved pop-culture themes: the Wild West and the undead. Become one of the triggermen facing the zombie apocalypse. Plan your tactics and bring it to life-fighting turn-based duels. Enjoy the Wild West with a twist in a lightweight, post-apocalypse scenario, where nothing is normal. Face a variety of themed undead such as the mighty Buffalo Zombie! Let those zombies taste your pistols, rifles, canons, or knives, and make sure they’ll regret the day they were… erhm… they went undead.

In theory sounds like a pretty cool concept, I enjoyed my time with games such as XCOM and Mario v Rabbids, but this one specifically left me with a bad taste in my mouth. A game being ported from PC to Nintendo Switch is rarely a smooth process, and this time is no exception. Unfortunately, this game doesn’t appear to be optimized for the Switch, the menus are incredibly small, they instead of rescaling things to adapt to the screen size of the switch just crammed it all in there. On top of that you can’t use the D-Pad or touch screen for any of the game, which is a VERY odd choice for a turn-based game on the Switch. The game does do a great job on the tutorial levels and instructing you on new game mechanics, it’s just unfortunate that the controls are very inadequate.

But aside from that, the game does have some fun to it. It definitely is a lighthearted quirky take on the zombie genre of games. The game does a decent job of explaining your objectives without directly holding your hand, some levels take some extra thinking power but nothing that you can’t eventually figure out. The gameplay once you can navigate the controls is solid, however I am not a fan of keeping track of ammo, considering the game just keeps spawning Zombies, you have to balance battle and escaping without getting overwhelmed.  I wish there was a better narrative or gameplay loop that made it feel connected, unfortunately the game is really just ten standalone map puzzles, as the game selects the characters and loud outs for you, so you don’t get to really help develop or adapt the gameplay style to suit your style or efforts.

I know there was a lot piled on here in the negative check boxes, but honestly, it’s not as bad as it sounds, just in the gameplay dept. However, given the game is available on PC, and for cheaper, it’s definitely better played there if at all possible.