Lead And Gold plays excellently. Thanks to the practice of giving pre-orders time before release to play the game, we've been able to get some hands-on time too. That's when you first start, though. Since it's a beta, the long-term viability of Lead And Gold is debatable, and elements that don't seem that unbalancing could come and rear their ugly heads. It's time to be cautious and critical, otherwise we might walk straight into a trap! Thankfully, there's not a whole lot of hype on this one, so we can base our evaluations on cold, hard gameplay.

One of the things we are most excited about is the synergy bonuses. Most games provide you was an abstract benefit by having teammates around. More teammates equals more general firepower and more targets for enemies to choose from, reducing your likelihood of being chosen. However, Lead And Gold decides to make this concrete with synergy bonuses. The more teammates you have around you, the greater your synergy is, which increases attributes such as critical strikes, toughness, or accuracy. This also opens up some gameplay concerns, however. In large teams, the synergy effects could essentially turn the team invincible thanks to a massive overdose of synergy. It also prevents lone wolf players from enjoying their favorite play style. While that's hardly that big of a concern in a team-based game, it's still there.

Another element that deserves scrutiny is the amount of weapons in the game. It seems there are only four real weapons: hunting rifle, revolver, coach gun, and lever-action rifle. Some more variety in the weapons would be nice. Still, they did manage to capture all of the Wild West archetypal weapons, which is fine by us. The gameplay modes also suffer from the same issue. There's no free-for-all deathmatch, but each team-based mode manages to convey the story of most Western-genre media, such as robberies or town invasions. The addition of modes for individual player competitions would definitely be welcome, even though it is a team-oriented game!

One of the worst parts of the game is that it does not have dedicated servers. While it's not that big of a deal in a smaller, indie-branded title such as this one, it's still a big disappointment. No matter how many times developers will try to convince players, direct connection simply isn't the way of the future. It's how games back in the era of Doom were played, not now! Here's hoping that dedicated servers are introduced to Lead And Gold at some point in the future, either through mod or through official patch. This direct connection, as always, will give the host a much larger advantage over the other players thanks to his position as the host.

Finally comes the integration with Steam. Lead And Gold is an entirely Steam-based game. While this is definitely good for the Steam lovers out there, those that want to play the game on another platform are out of luck. The game includes achievements and (presumably) Steam Cloud support, so there's always that as consolation. Still, if you want to play on GFWL, Impulse, or any competing service, you will have to just give up.

Lead And Gold looks fun. The beta is certainly a blast, even if it does have irritating connection issues and some mild unbalance. The setting looks to be an entertaining continuation of the best Western games. Overall, despite the lack of hype or tons of information on the game, we're looking forward to it. There's some concerns, but there always are.