Warning: Dead PVP Game
This game has no single player content, and no functioning PvP population, it's a dead game, and cannot be played meaningfully as the developer intended.

"Lead and Gold: Gangs of the Wild West" is an ancient game from 2010. It's a whopping 14 years old at the time of this review. While the game features support for modern gaming PCs, the game looks and feels a little dated compared to newer, free to play PvP games. It carries a pretty high price tag for an abandoned game, too. This seems to have be lingering on Steam with an inflated price to try profit from abandonware.

The focus of the game is pure PvP, there's no single player content. The developer gambled that other players would be an acceptable substitute for adding storytelling, level design etc to the game. The vast majority of PvP-only games fail because they don't "go viral", and without players, or single player content to add a lasting value to the game, the game dies. Developers must learn that other players are not an acceptable substitute for adding content to a game.

While this game did once have a modestly functional gamer population, those players have left for greener pastures. In some ways this is unfortunate as the game featured many game modes, character customisability and a few other elements that probably validated the price tag 10 years ago... but that doesn't hold true for today.

On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.

Because this is designed for consoles, it carries a number of deliberate design deficiencies. Compromises were made to cater to the inferior console gaming appliances that the game was designed for. These are unfortunate compromises and limitations that PC gamers shouldn't be forced to accept, but it's evident that PC was a second thought for the console-centric developers. The game is deficient as a result of these choices, and would have been so much better without the handicaps that designing games for consoles forces upon a game. Once more, console peasants have made gaming worse for everyone.

These technical defects push this game below acceptable standards for any modern PC game.

Unethically, the developers have left this on the Steam store in an unplayable and abandoned state. It's the responsibility of the developer to maintain their product, ensure it runs on all modern PCs, or if they determine there's defects or just no players so the game doesn't work, they should remove it from sale instead of misleadingly trying to scam gamers into buying knowingly unplayable products.

So, should you buy this playerless multiplayer game? Is this one of the best of the 100,000+ games on Steam?

The developer is deliberately and unethically trying to scam gamers into paying them the almost unethical price of $10 USD for a game they know is broken. Don't give it to them. For comparison, the $10 asking price for this game could get you games like "Ghostrunner", "Mass Effect Andromeda" or "Lethal Company". Quality, professionally made games like those are frequently on sale cheaper than this. There's also hundreds of freemium PvP games with more players and no entry fee... so if you want to PvP, try one of those instead.