GAME REVIEW: Sombrero: Spaghetti Western Mayhem

Sombrero game

What is Sombrero: Spaghetti Western Mayhem? It’s a 2-4 player competitive platforming action game that pits you against other players in a handful of game modes including Deathmatch, Loot, Capture the Flag, and Banditos. Created by PixelMetal and published by Alliance Digital Media on October 27th, it’s your rather standard 2D party game that can be both played online or locally. And it’s a good thing it can be played locally, or there would quite literally be no reason to purchase this game right now. And it’s a shame too. Sombrero isn’t a terrible game by any means, but it is a bit cookie cutter. If you’ve played games like Duck Game and Move or Die, you’ll feel like you’ve played this game before.

You start by plugging in the amount of controllers you want, each player selects a character, you choose a stage and gamemode, and you finally hop in. I’ll go through each game mode briefly so you get the general idea, starting with Deathmatch. This is self-explanatory, but you hope around a single-screen level firing your weapon at opponents in an attempt to get the most kills. There are weapon pickups to gather and change your firing method, but overall it’s the most basic of the game modes and the most familiar.

Capture the Flag is another game mode that you’ve heard of before, where the objective is to gather the most flags that appear randomly around the level while dodging opposing fire from other players. Loot is very similar to Capture the Flag, as you hop around gathering bags of money while outmaneuvering your opponents while firing at them. And lastly is Baditos, which has you collecting a single Golden Monkey and attempting to hold onto it as long as possible before the end of the round. The other players can try and take it from you as well.

And that’s your choices right now. The content is a bit lacking, with the only variation coming from differences in player skill and the different character skins you can choose from. Powerups do seek to change gameplay a bit, such as TNT, throwing axes, a machine gun, shotgun, throwing knives, and other various, slightly old western themed weaponry, with the exception of some alien blasters. All these weapons do aim the same way, using a twin stick setup.

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As long as you’re using a gamepad, you move your character with the left stick, and fire using the right stick, where your shot will fire in the direction you are holding the stick. It’s purposely a bit inaccurate, as there is no on screen indicator to show where you’re aiming, and you need to rely on the trajectory of your shots to follow where you’re shooting. This does lead to some clumsily chaotic moments where you and your friends desperately try to kill each other whilst also hopping around madly. Some weapons do react differently with the environment, such as your classic six shooter being able to travel through platforms, but weapons such as the throwing knives simply stick to the surface, forcing you to be on the same platform as who you want to shoot at. I’m not arguing that there could be a little strategy to the gameplay, but it’s mostly straightforward and easy to pickup, which is great for a party game.

And as a party game is the only way you’re likely to play it currently. I’ve tried searching for matches several times now, and I still turn up empty every time. This could change however, given some time, but it’s unlikely there will be a thriving community of players surrounding this title. Which is a shame, because the art is kind of nice, with a cartoonish style mixed with various cultural influences relating to a western theme, and it’s clear work was put into this to make it a fun time to play, but it just doesn’t offer a ton of content. There’s only four maps to choose from, and four game types, and since character choices don’t make a difference other than cosmetically, the only real way to change up any given match is to rely on varying power ups.

Sombrero isn’t a bad title by any means, it just doesn’t offer anything different than what you can already find other than a change in theme. To give my fairest recommendation, I’d say to pick up cheap, but certainly not its asking price of $15 USD, as there are plenty of other party titles at or near that target price that offer more content per dollar. But keep an eye out if you’re interested, as the main page on Steam states that there will be free content updates later on that might make the package a better deal.

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