Sombrero: Spaghetti Western Mayhem Review

Hitch your trusty steed, order your whiskey neat, and lasso up your friends for a hectic hailstorm of brightly-colored dust and hip-fired bullets in Sombrero.  This 2-4 player spaghetti western party shooter offers just a few ways to play, but they’re chock-ful of over the top havoc for anyone out there with a need for another competitive multiplayer indie title to add to their collection. The game is most of what it sets out to be – it is fast, competitive, and chaotic. Though the game is enabled for online multiplayer and local multiplayer, saddling up on the couch with three other desperadoes is really the only way you’re going to get your game on, since it is a long-shot finding even one other person in an online game. This is, unfortunately, the sad truth for most lesser-known multiplayer indie titles, but certainly not a reason for losing interest entirely. Sombrero is exactly the kind of game you want to have on hand when you’ve got the controllers, the bodies, and the mind for some classic competitive shooting with a catchy western style.  The game comes with 4 game modes, 4 maps, several power-ups, and a host of wacky western (and not-so-western) characters to choose from.

So after I gathered up 3 other cowboys and girls, we fired up some classic Deathmatch. We were quick to realize the simplicity of the game. Using the right thumb stick to shoot in any direction, we set out blasting haphazardly across the map in all directions, some of us aiming and some of us merely trying to avoid inevitable death. The power ups at our disposal included some western classics like tomahawks and TNT and some stranger weapons like the boomerang and exploding metal fist. With each of our deaths, the much-loved Wilhelm scream tolled, mocking your death and putting a snide smirk on the face of your killer.

In the next variant Loot, we ran around the map gathering bags of cash and lighting fires for point multipliers, while still chaotically avoiding the plethora of projectiles being hurled and fired.  Quickly, we realized that actually having an objective besides killing your friends more than they kill you made the game considerably more enjoyable. We moved next into the game type called Banditos, in which we were tasked with nabbing a golden idol and keeping it away from everyone else. Though we found this mode enabled some pretty cheesy camping strategies, due to the fairly over-powered upgrade the idol grants to its current owner. In the last mode, we had our biggest hoot. Capture the Flag was a great balance between the chaos of simply shooting at anything that moves and actually trying to do something. It got everyone out of their corners and running all across the map trying to capture and defend their flags. This mode seemed to lend itself best to strategic thinking and shooting, while making the most of the madhouse mayhem the game is all about.

Like all party titles of this shooty, fighty, fast-paced nature, Sombrero is going to be a good time with any group of friends. With characters this goofy, an art design inspired heavily by a beloved genre, and gameplay that is smooth and quick, it’s hard to poke it full of holes. That being said, there are dozens of games out there in a similar vein.  With plenty of alternative options like Super Smash Brothers, Towerfall: Ascension, Screencheat, Duck Game, Move Or Die, and Nidhogg, it’s a tough life for a competitive couch multiplayer game like Sombrero. And it is especially true in this case because there’s nothing in particular that really makes Sombrero stick out besides it’s colorful and energetic western theme. There is no real gimmick that goes along with the art and music style, there’s nothing really that makes it play differently than other shooters of its type, the characters all function identically, and you might find yourself moving to another game after only a brief amount of time spent with it, simply because there’s only so many times you can play CTF or Deathmatch. Other more nitpicky problems include unpredictable and somewhat unfair spawn positions, a lack of anything truly unique in the four game modes, and just a general feeling of repetitiveness after playing 5 or 6 rounds.

The western theme is a good choice, but it would really kick the game up a notch if there were some mechanic inherent to the playstyle that somehow called back to classic tropes of the western genre. Perhaps the occasional shoot-out between two players alone, or just a wider range of weapon choices or game modes, or perhaps wider, more expansive plains-type maps. That being said, there is nothing about Sombrero itself that would make you call it a bad game. In a vacuum, you could easily get your money’s worth with a group of similarly-skilled friends. The characters are delightful, the maps are well-designed and mechanically different from one another, the weapons are goofy and offer a good deal of variety to the gameplay, and the game feels over all polished.

So to round-up all that’s been said, Sombrero: Spaghetti Western Mayhem is an excellent choice for any drifters out there looking for another party game to add to the ole’ collection. The game is a truly good time if you’ve got enough people and controllers for the local multiplayer and it feels like a well-made game. There are some issues with the saturated field the game was thrust into, there’s a lack of anything precisely unique in the mechanics and they relate to the exciting western theme, and there’s no one to play with online. The art style is bright and hectic and the gameplay is equally enjoyable and chaotic. So, in a few closing words Sombrero is not exactly ambitious, but still a blast with friends.

REVIEW CODE: A complimentary PC code was provided to Brash Games for this review. Please send all review code enquiries to editor@brashgames.co.uk.