Cattle Rustlin' has hit the Windows Phone. Where Crazy Horses calls for you to lasso and corral horses, Bandit: Rustler has you lassoing and collecting stampeding cattle.
The game is well presented with colorful, cartoon animations. But good graphics is but one aspect of a quality game. To find out more on Bandit:Rustler, mosey on past the break.
Game Layout
Bandit: Rustler's main menu will: send you to the game, launch the options menu (sound and vibration on/off), display your high scores, offer a brief help/how-to section as well as the customary About Section and links for other apps by the developer.
The game screen has your character, on horse back, at the far left of the screen and he will begin to work left to right. Along the top of the screen you have your current score (cash earned by the cattle lassoed), your high score, and your lives. Just past that is an ad banner.
You move your cowboy up and down the screen by touch. Tapping the screen ahead of the cowboy will send out the lasso. You have to dodge cactus, rocks, rattlesnakes and other obstacles as you chase down the cows. You also have a bull that will make things difficult as well.
You can bump the cows to keep them ahead of you because if they get past, you loose a life. You can gain extra lives by earning $2,000. Naturally, the goal is to lasso as many cows, earning as much cash as possible.
Overall Impression
Bandit:Rustler is a fun game but it could be better. It takes a while to get used to holding your phone, steering the cowboy with one hand and sending the lasso out with the other. I couldn't help but think the accelerometer would have been a better way to steer your cowboy.
While I can understand the need to keep the cows in front of you but this can be a tough row to hoe seeing that you can only throw the lasso directly in front of you. I think the cowboy needs the ability to throw the lasso to the side and behind to give him a fighting chance.
Still Bandit: Rustler isn't a terrible game for your Windows Phone. To the contrary, Bandit: Rustler was a fun game to play. It ran stable and even though there's room for improvement the game would make for a nice addition to your Windows Phone game library.
Bandit: Rustler is a free, ad-supported game that you can find here (opens Zune) at the Marketplace.
