After last week's Free and Worth Every Penny installment, Space Funeral, I kind of feel like I need to give my brain a rest. Not that there wasn't merit to the trippy, musically rich horror of last week's game... but as I said in the comments, it made me feel like I'm getting old, because it just wasn't for me. You know what is for me? Gun.Smoke. Anybody else remember that? I played that game for days as a kid. If you did too, then this week's title is right up your alley.
A little context may be required before jumping into the game proper. There's a rather infamous NES cartridge that's received more than its fair share of attention on the 'net over the years titled "Action 52". A compilation of universally awful mini-games, its reputation for being unbearable to play led to a TIGSource collaboration earlier this year where members were challenged to re-make the ideas of the Action 52 cart into something more respectable. Sombreros (along with another 'net darling, Streemerz) was one of the more successful products of that venture.
The original Sombreros was a vertically scrolling shooter in which you shot guys, dodged cars, and collected sombreros. (Apparently the hats were stolen, and as the sheriff you needed to get them back.) I'm not going to embed it, but if you want to see it in action, it looked like this. From that inauspicious seed, Dustin Gunn has grown a much richer experience, in which an offensively stereotyped corrupt politician is trying to take over an offensively stereotyped Mexico (Dustin describes the game as "inspired both by the vaguely racist original game and countless western movies and games"). You must shut the would-be dictator down.
The basic mechanic is classic top-down shooting - arrow keys to move around, X to fire a pistol with infinite ammo in the direction you're facing. You'll square off against an army of bandits, both on foot and in vehicles, as well as several boss characters. All of which would make for an entertaining but standard experience, if not for the extra effort Sombreros puts in to set itself apart. Most notably, the nameless sheriff has a recharging "dead eye" power - a label I use because it functions very similarly to the one in Red Dead Redemption. At any time, holding down C will freeze the action and allow you to carefully place up to 6 shots that will be fired as soon as you release the key. The power is recharged by collecting drops from fallen enemies - sombreros, of course. In addition to being useful for crowd control, you'll need to master this ability if you hope to beat the much more challenging showdown fights and boss battles. Also welcome (and similar to Gun.Smoke) is the ability to strafe - holding down X will keep you firing in that direction no matter where you move.
Beyond those mechanical improvements, Sombreros differentiates itself through variety. While a relatively short game (a speedrun video of under 20 minutes exists, but I'd say that an hour or so is a more realistic runtime for most players), it packs in a lot of stuff to do. You'll encounter enemies on rooftops you'll need to take out with carefully placed dynamite throws. You'll do one-on-one quick draw showdowns against increasingly fast marksmen. You'll make your way through a minefield of exploding hot peppers (...yes, really) as the game mixes bullet-hell dodging with its shooting action. You'll cause donkey stampedes. You'll beat a boss by literally tearing him in half... and then beat him again when both halves come back to fight you later. And at the end, if you're very lucky, you'll use the power of sombreros to save the town, and all of Mexico with it.
I can't believe I wrote that last sentence. "The power of sombreros." Sorry about that.
Now that's a hot peppe-- I'm sorry, I can't do it. It is a fun level, though.
I'm not going to try to convince you that Sombreros is a life-altering experience, or even that it will give you anything to think about. I love my art-house games, but this is not one of them. And sometimes that's great; this weekend, deep thought wasn't my goal. I wanted something silly, quick and challenging, and this fit the bill nicely. If you're in a similar mood, I recommend checking it out. As long as you can get past the overt and not-really-all-that-funny stereotyping (oh look, you shoot a pinata as a checkpoint. Yup. I get it.), there's a lot of gameplay to like here.
Sombreros is...
- fast, challenging and tightly controlled, like a good NES knockoff should be.
- at least 100 times better than the Action 52 "game" that inspired it.
- backed by pretty great visuals and a fun soundtrack, since I didn't mention that above.
- a silly diversion that I'm grateful to have stumbled across.
If you'd like to give it a spin, it's under 10MB and can be picked up at Dustin's site, Sniper Diplomat. Windows only.
"Free And Worth Every Penny" is a column I collaborate on with Mike Bellmore at Colony of Gamers. This piece also appears there.