In the first settlement you try and enter, the marshal runs you out of town and threatens to shoot you on sight if you ever return. Soon you move on from the bounty hunter role, occupying the body of a Pigman, a grossly disfigured semi-porcine human who’s reviled by all. In one section, we wiped out the entire leadership of a cult after discovering their duplicity, only to have to go through with their mission anyway, because that was the only story quest marker available. There are also plenty of moments that feel unfairly scripted rather than a direct consequence of your decisions, for instance when your reputation suffers as a result of committing a crime that was witnessed by nobody. That may well be true to life, but it’s also frustrating in a game that claims to give you unlimited agency. Although all courses of action are open to you, some just prove too difficult the battles they trigger making you face such overwhelming odds that even after multiple attempts you realise you just can’t follow your convictions and have to settle for the more survivable route. However, this is a feature that works better in theory than in practice. Take down a bandit outlaw and you’ll get a reward, but any surviving henchmen or family members may well start a vendetta against you, waiting in ambush to exact their own bloody retribution for your killing or capture of their friend. It’s a key tenet of the genre, which believes strongly in player freedom and consequential actions. In Weird West it’s perfectly possible to shoot key characters, and once dead they never come back, their plotlines and quests lost forever. Save and quick save are bolstered by frequent auto saves to give you a range of possibilities if you make a mistake, either by getting discovered too soon or accidentally killing someone you’d rather have kept alive. Its synth-ish music reminded me of John Carpenter’s Halloween, which adds a touch of horror to Weird West’s vibe.If you played Dishonored you’ll already be familiar with the save scumming that’s absolutely encouraged in these games. It features a beautiful (lightly) cel-shaded art style that feels especially distinct thanks to Weird West’s three isometric view points – far-out camera angle, a mid-angle, and a close zoom. Weird West’s puzzle-like twin-stick shooter combat wasn’t the only thing that piqued my interest. I began to view them as small puzzles that doubled as opportunities to gun down some local gang members, and in doing so, Weird West’s more immersive sim-nature shined. In my couple of hours with Weird West, it was these combat scenarios that intrigued me most. I especially like that Weird West isn’t super generous with ammunition, too, because it forced me to cycle through all the weapons at my disposal quite often. Different guns have different ranges and damage outputs, and fortunately, switching between them is easy even in the heat of an intense battle. You use either your WASD keys or your left joystick to move around the area and your mouse or right stick to aim a sightline on-screen in classic twin-stick shooter fashion. Regardless of what you decide to do, combat plays out the same way mechanically.
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