Secret Poncho tosses you into a frantic Wild West shootout

As we tumbled towards our enemies--a slob with a chaingun and a slender man with a whip--we wondered, "what are we fighting for?"

Nah, not really, we just whipped out our dual revolvers and kept shooting, blasting our foes and forcing them to hide behind cover, which we then rendered useless with the toss of a stick of dynamite. That's just the way of the west in Secret Ponchos, a top-down shooter with a focus on player-versus-player combat. Our time with the game was brief, but long enough to give us a good idea of the basic gameplay, which feels more akin to a third-person shooter than any other top-down game we've played.

Players will battle across five maps in a number of different game modes, choosing between a number of different interesting characters. Each has a weapon with two functions (like our revolver, which could be altered to shoot powerful close-range shots and fast long-range blasts) as well as a secondary item (like our dynamite), adding plenty of variety to the brawls. Visually it was nice, but didn't really feel like it needed the power of the PlayStation 4 to function--something the developers plan to address by adding cloth physics and ambient lighting inclusion for the next-gen version. There's also talk of adding new modes and characters post-launch, including a capture-point map with AI-controlled opponents, turning Secret Ponchos into League of Legends. Will it win the west? We don't know, but we're gunning to find out when it releases early next year.

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