American Laser games was a game company that came up with a bunch of live action shooting gallery games that were released for the arcades and later the releases for home consoles. They all had one thing in common though is that they full of cheesy acting and that they were incredibly lame and shallow. The original Mad Dog McCree in the arcades on one hand was well at least well received for 1990 and it did have some novelty in that being that it came in a massive arcade machine and some of the short comings were forgivable. They were other games that the studio brought out that followed from that game’s success for both arcades and home consoles such as Mad Dog II The Lost Gold, Space Pirates, Who Shot Johnny Rock and Crime Patrol I & II. The only that remained in the arcades however was Fast Draw Showdown which later made its way to the Wiiware on the Nintendo Wii as a download only game. Fast Draw Showdown is just the showdown sequences of Mad Dog McCree and made it into a full game with different actors and if you played that game before you kind of know what is to be expected here.
Credit: Digital LeisureYou can play the game alone or with another player in 2 -player showdown where both players square off against 2 other cowboys. The player’s goal in the game is to play though six different showdowns that spawn across 8 different rounds. You play the showdowns by waiting for the draw signal to pop on the screen and when it does you draw the gun and shoot the cowboy down before he shoots you first within the split second time limit. This simulates the feeling like in those old Wild West movies where you two gunmen waiting for signal to draw and shoot and the game surprisingly manages to capture that decently.
There are different times that you have to beat the cowboy in order to win and advance to the next round. If you win against every single opponent then you’ll advance to the next round where you have to react quicker in order to win. The main problem is that you have to win every single showdown in the round in order to advance to the next. That’s right if you mess up and lose one showdown and you’ll fail the round and have to restart the round all over. What makes little sense is that is that even after failing one showdown you can continue to do the other showdowns in the round but even if you do win them you’ll still have to restart the whole round over because you lost 1 showdown just feels like a dumb design choice. There is no option to be able to restart the current round you are on over after screwing up so you are stuck playing the other showdowns till the ones in the current round are over.
The controls are basic to learn, you lay the remote faced down and wait for the draw signal to appear, when the draw signal pops on the screen you quickly point the the remote at the screen and use the B trigger to shoot. If you point the remote at the screen early before the signal you will get a foul followed by a remainder to lay the remote down, if you foul again you’ll lose the round automatically. The game-play works for the first few rounds but when you get to round 4 the difficulty simply skyrockets and gets unfair quickly because you have to draw and react really quickly and you can lose really easily since you have to draw in like 0.78 for example and it can get really frustrating. Adding to the problem is that sometimes the Wii Remote and the Sensor Bar take time to synchronise where the remote is pointing at and the cursor could be on the side of the screen or below before finally syncing up which is more than enough to cause you to lose which really gets frustrating. Having to replay rounds gets tiring and you all are doing is replaying showdowns you already have won and having to win them all to try and advance onwards. Eventually if your patience hasn’t completely ran out you’ll eventually make it to the final boss who will react instantly before you even get a chance to even lift an inch of the Wii Remote. If you can somehow manage to beat the final boss you’ll beat the game with a good pat on the back showing you have more patience than a saint than anyone ever would playing this. Every showdown in the game is repetitive and the overall gameplay consists of waiting and quickly drawing and shooting and it gets boring and frustrating really fast.
Being that it is a live action game from the arcades it has good overall quality and performance on the Wii and that the best thing to come from this game. The live acting acting is as dumb as other games in the series you can see them performing weird drops and faints when you shoot them. They sometimes they act weird for example they act drunk when they don’t look like it, do ridiculous stunts or dances before drawing their guns or even forget to prepare themselves. They are amusing to watch the first time but the cheesy-ness of it all becomes tiring after seeing someone fall over stupidly for the hundredth time. Soundtrack is not bad at all and it is fitting for a game set in the wild west.
Credit: Digital LeisureFast Draw Showdown is just a poor live action shooting game that simply gets boring really fast and no amount of cheesy acting and redeemable parts make up for frustration and tedium that you are going to have with it. At a price of 500 Nintendo points (£4.99) it is not worth downloading as this is a showdown best avoided. If you want a Light Gun Shooter that simulates Wild West Showdowns perfectly then I highly recommend Wild Gunman for the NES if you track down a copy of it. You’ll get more enjoyment out of shooting cowboys in comedic fashions in that compared to this trash which by the time this was out in Arcades much more better Light Gun games like Virtua Cop, Time Crisis and Area 51 came out made Fast Draw Showdown obsolete and formulaic instantly.
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Game Title: Fast Draw Showdown
Platform: Wiiware
Developer:American Laser Games
Publisher: Digital leisure
Genre: Light-Gun Shooter
Age Rating: PEGI 16+
Release Date: 22nd January 2010
Price: 500 Nintendo Points
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Game Score: 3/10
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The Pros:
1. The somewhat awful acting is amusing to watch for a while
2. Does simulate the Quick Draw Showdowns decently
The Bads:
1. Having to repeat the same round after 1 fail is frustrating and stupid
2. Lame Quick-Draw game-play
3. It’s gets boring really fast
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Reviewed by Anthony Hayball (BlaZer91)
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