With Norrath behind us the Shortiez guild has set out on the road to high adventure. We’ll be exploring a multitude of virtual environments, and I’ll do my best to offer my thoughts on ‘the places we’ll go’.  Our first new port of call: the multiplayer strategy title Bang! Howdy.

… okay, yes, I know it’s not an MMO. But Brian really wanted to try it out so … there we were.

B!H is a western-themed game, with ‘yee-haws’ and ‘pardners’ from here to the horizon. In actual play you control a small group of tactically unique units, pitting your skills against a number of AI or human opponents. There are a number of different game types, requiring you to do various western-y things like brand cattle or collect gold nuggets.

The game is definitely one of those ’simple to learn, hard to master’ types of experiences. Each unit has straightforward gameplay elements, but in combination they can be quite complex. One quick example: the sharpshooter longrifleman has the ability to knock items out of opponent units’ hands. An opponent holding a chunk of gold will drop it when he gets plugged by this guy. There’s another unit in the game, a steam-powered robot. He’s kind of weak, but he moves an enormous number of squares every turn. I found that the sharpshooter’s long range and dropping ability combined very well with the steam robot’s long distance movement.

Overall I really liked the theming, and found the game fun to play from moment-to-moment. As with every Three Rings project, the art direction was fantastic. It’s a great-looking title. That said, I was disappointed by a number of things. Foremost in my frustrations was the absurd amount of time I spent in the game’s lengthy tutorial. I understand that you have to explain details and such but … seriously, it was like a 45 minute tutorial.

Even more frustrating than that, given the Shortiez group’s stated purpose of playing together, was the fact that we never played together. Every time we tried to Warty was kicked out of the game. None of the rest of us had problems, and we were respectively only at two houses. Katie and I didn’t have problems, Brian didn’t have a problem … so what was up with that?

Overall, I can comfortably recommend giving B!H a try if you like titles like Final Fantasy Tactics. There’s a bunch of free-to-play fun to be had there, and a fun theme to enjoy while you’re doing it.