When Secret Ponchos first made its debut, it was at Sony’s 2013 E3 Press Conference where it was featured on Sony’s smorgasbord of Indies. Unfortunately, Secret Ponchos has turned out to be the ugly stepchild of the bunch, offering uninspired gameplay, lack of content, and barren multiplayer lobbies that ironically mirror the Wild West itself. Secret Ponchos at first glance looks frantic, fast-paced and pretty darn cool but when you look under the sombrero, it’s as shallow as it is dull to play.
Secret Ponchos just throws you into the action. No real tutorial here, as if the game expects you to learn the ropes by getting your butt kicked by pros online. There’s no story here or single player content so if you’re not a fan of the competitive mode, there isn’t really anything else for you to do.
There’s 4 different outlaws to choose from and each come with their own gun slinging set of skills and characteristics. They’re all rather unique and play differently, from the ghostly Phantom Poncho to the dual-pistol wielding Kid Red. I favored Phantom Poncho for his highly-powerful shotgun and bull-whip. There are three game modes, your standard free-for-all, team death-match and domination.
Despite being one of PlayStation Plus’ free offerings for December, there is virtually no one playing this game. It’s a shame because it’s hard to rank up playing full on 4v4 or free-for-all when there’s not enough people to get a match going. It’s a continuous issue that plagues the game. There were times where matchmaking took at least 15 minutes in an empty lobby and then collapsed when the last missing player was never found.
It’s rather frustrating, especially when the core game itself is often riddled with lag and terrible connection speeds. It’s quite evident that not many people want to take the time to fight through this laggy, troubled shooter even when it’s free.
Your outlaw looks badass on the battlefield especially when you unlock new costumes but the gameplay terribly hinders any goodwill the game built up with its spaghetti western aesthetic. Reloading is intentionally slow and there is limited stamina and cooldowns for your abilities; normally this wouldn’t be a complaint as it adds a tactical and calculating edge to the gameplay but it falters helplessly under the troubled lag. When everything is working and the connections appear to be smooth, Secret Ponchos delivers a passable, twitchy twin-stick shooter experience that quickly overstays its welcome.
Secret Ponchos feels very shallow and hastily put together. You’ll quickly grow tired of the frantic shooting and it’s painfully unforgiving ranking system. It’s good-looking game that looks better in action but the lack of content and constant lag rears its ugly head no more than 30 minutes into the game. Then you start to wonder why you downloaded it in the first place. Oh yeah, it was free.
