Bought this game during the recent Steam sale. Remember playing it when I was younger on the Xbox, so I figured I would relive some memories and pick up the PC port since it was dirt cheap.
Unfortunately, I didn't live up to my memories of it, and I have to conclude it's quite a mediocre game.
The conceit of the game is that it's basically a first person shooter, but instead of a normal gun, you have a crossbow that shoots a variety of critters (which are the different ammo types).
Spiders that tangle enemies in a web, wasps that are like a rapid fire machine gun, bats that explode, the furballs that have sharp teeth and function like proximity mines, etc.
It's a nice idea but it doesn't really work, because the game doesn't seem to be designed nor balanced around it, which is unfortunate considering that's the central gimmick of the game. I think what happened is that the developers had an interesting idea on paper, but then weren't able to flesh out it into a successful execution of said idea.
One of the ammo types, for example, is a talking chipmunk which acts as bait for enemies (there's a very rudimentary stealth system in this game). The tutorial introduces the idea of luring your enemies into a trap using these noisemakers. Except, throughout the rest of the game there's absolutely no reason whatsoever to actually do this. Sure you can lure an enemy to you and then shoot them, but there's basically no added benefit; you might as well just shoot them, straight up.
There's also some balancing issues in that there's a default infinite ammo type which is this electric bug, which if you let it charge up, stuns most enemies. The most efficient strategy then is to stun enemies with this infinite ammo type, while walloping them with the ammo type that does the most damage.
There's also bosses in the game which you can either kill or capture (there's a sort fantastical Wild West theme throughout the game, and you're a bounty hunter). Here again, the most efficient way to capture bosses is to just spam the stun and damage ammo types in quick succession. It would be much more interesting if each boss required a different approach e.g. this one needs to be stung with the wasp ammo before you can tie him up with the spiders, another might need to be bled out using the furball traps with sharp teeth before you can stun him, etc. Unfortunately, that's no the case.
What it comes down to, is that the game doesn't live up to
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