Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West Hands-On - Classes, Modes, and Multiplayer Shoot-Outs

Nothing says "Game Developers Conference 2010" quite like pretending to be an Internet cowboy and blasting another Internet cowboy out of his boots. But that's exactly how we kicked off our day, specifically with a hands-on session of Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West, a multiplayer PC shooter from developer FatShark and publisher Paradox. The game takes place in the Old West on six different multiplayer maps that are set in and around classic 19th-century American towns, gulches, and mines, but it doesn't seem to be afraid to follow the example of the popular shooter Team Fortress 2 to use icons, menus, and smart pointers to help encourage simpler, easy-to-understand gameplay.

Lead and Gold offers five-on-five head-to-head multiplayer in five different modes, including standard Team Deathmatch and Conquest modes, though it also has other unusual modes that take advantage of the Old West setting (and, again, take a cue or two here and there from Team Fortress 2), such as Powder Keg, an attack/defend mode in which the attacking team must pick up and lug around heavy powder barrels to blow up key points on the map; Robbery, in which the attacking team must blow up a bank vault, then steal three bags of gold; and Gold Fever, a co-op mode that will also serve as a tutorial.

The game offers four player classes, most of which carry a primary weapon and a pistol as an alternate. Each class has a particular specialty, and each class also radiates a "synergy"--basically, a range-based aura that enhances the abilities of any nearby teammates. The classes include the blaster, a shotgun-toting demolitions expert who can toss dynamite (and "cook" it by holding onto the explosives a bit before tossing); the trapper, a sniper with a rifle and bear traps that can stun opponents; the deputy, who carries a repeating carbine and can "mark" an enemy, similar to the ability of the hunter class in World of Warcraft to "mark" an enemy (making it more vulnerable to damage); and the gunslinger, who has no secondary weapon apart from his revolvers but who can fire as quickly as you can click your mouse. Lead and Gold has no healer class, but just sticking close to your teammates will gradually heal any injuries you've sustained, and any friendly teammate can revive you if you've fallen in battle.

We played through a few quick multiplayer sessions and found the game to be team-focused and very accessible, with a lot of smart, evolved design decisions that streamline out some of the usual frustrations of multiplayer shooters. You can sprint endlessly, for instance, but may not fire your weapon while running; you can pick up a team flag from your base and act as a mobile spawn point to help keep your team together; and you won't simply die outright when severely injured--you'll fall to the ground, unable to move but still able to fire your weapon until a teammate revives you or an enemy finishes you off. Lead and Gold doesn't seem to have a minimap of any sort, but your nearby teammates and map objectives are all marked onscreen by helpful icons and pointers, as are any enemies that happen to be doing something critical to the map's win-loss conditions (such as carrying a powder keg). Though it took a few moments for us to get our bearings, we quickly found the clear iconic markings onscreen to be helpful in finding our teammates, forming groups, and heading to the most important hot spots on the map quickly. The game's pacing definitely resembles that of Team Fortress 2: it's fast and fluid, and getting killed is only a minor setback--even if you don't get revived and choose to respawn, you're usually back in action in five to 10 seconds, if that, and if you're on the same team with players who actually know what they're doing, it's likely you won't even need to wait that long since they'll just revive you.

Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West seems like an accessible, smartly designed multiplayer shooter designed to maximize good team behavior and minimize frustration. It'll go into beta in the next week or so and is scheduled for launch later this year.