A multiplayer-only add-on built over Valve's Source engine, the Spaghetti Western-inspired Fistful of Frags is an appealing full-conversion mod set in the Old West. It features five unique maps and over a dozen period weapons, including knives, axes, single and dual Colt Navy revolvers, a .41 Deringer, double barrel shotgun, Henry repeating rifle, bow and arrow, Smith carbine, Sharps rifle, and -- in lieu of hand grenades -- good old-fashioned dynamite.
The goal is to accumulate money for your chosen team. After you make your selection between the Desperado and Vigilante factions, you must try to harvest money from various wooden crates dotted throughout the map while keeping an eye out for similarly motivated enemies. It's not as easy as dashing over a cache of money at full speed either because as soon as you find one of these crates you have to stand beside it, hit the action key and wait for a progress bar to fill up. This seemingly interminable wait leaves you vulnerable to enemy fire so it's best to buddy up with a teammate so someone can watch your back throughout the process.
The good news is that you not only get credit (in the form of notoriety points) from any cash you retrieve, but also by protecting a teammate while they grab the money. Or just by hurting or killing enemy players. You can then spend these points between rounds to upgrade your weapons and purchase additional ammo. You gain notoriety every time you injure an enemy but the amount can vary. The total amount of points received when hurting an opponent depends on the victim's notoriety and the weapon you employed during the attack. The system awards more points if the victim possesses more notoriety than you or whenever you use weapons with a lower damage rating (like your fists). Fistful of Frags also distributes kill points fairly to everyone who contributed to the enemy's demise, and not just to the person who administered the coup de grace.
Shooting some of these old guns takes practice -- an onscreen crosshair helps you aim -- but you should get the hang of it after a few matches. I encountered at least two or three open servers each time I checked but you'll need to download the 1.1 update in order to play. Saddle up Pilgrim, there's varmints out there in need of some serious frontier justice.
