Weird West, the review | Gazzetta.it

“Requires a pickaxe” usually means just that in video games: you need this specific tool to complete the action. In Weird West, it is simply a suggestion. If you think something should logically work – for example, mining with dynamite – it most likely will. Kick a bucket of water and land it on a hotbed, and you’ll put it out. Are you catching fire yourself? Do a somersault or dive into a river.

One of the most magical things in video games is how they respond to your actions. Not just the fact that you can point a gun and pull the trigger, killing from a distance, but the little things, like how AI reacts to nonviolent actions or how history changes to notice your decisions. This is the kind of games that Raphael Colantonio and his team in WolfEye have been creating since they founded Arkane Studios: immersive sims. It’s a design ethos that continues with the new studio’s debut game. The main difference between this and Dishonored for one is budget.

A true immersive sim –

Weird West is an immersive sim as much as she is Deus Ex and Thief, but it is seen through an overhead view. While one might have hoped for a triple-A version, played from a first-person perspective, the purity of vision – and budget constraints – allow the game to go even deeper into the aspect of choices and consequences. Kill someone, including key characters, and the story continues. It’s built to be played and replayed, to mess with it and push it to the limit. Sure, you might see a lot of the same assets repeated in its small play spaces, but video games are so much more than realistically animated testicles.

The game opens with a gang that kidnaps your husband and kills your son. The first quest is to bury your son and dig up your irons, set aside when Jane Bell decided to leave her life as a bounty hunter behind. The story is rooted in a typical cowboy movie setting, but it doesn’t take too long to figure out why the game isn’t just called “West”. Your husband has been captured by a gang called the Stillwaters, who plan to sell him as a meal to the mermaids, a race of shape-shifting creatures that crawl on the ground when they don’t pretend to be human. Anyone in this world could be a mermaid in disguise, and there are also some people – like a prisoner calling himself “Snack” – who want to be eaten by them. So far, all normal.

Weird West characters –

Once Jane Bell’s story is over, he takes on the role of a man-pig who may or may not have been a pig anymore when he was just a man. You will be required to help a tree commit suicide. Once this is done, you will be an indigenous protector who will be battling with the curse of the Windigo, a physical manifestation of colonialism. Elevate the greed of men, to the point where they are so full of lust that they eat their own lips. We’ll let you discover the remaining two characters for yourself, but each has a standalone story that’s woven into an overlying tale about a group of immortals trying to do… something it would be a spoiler to tell you.

When one character’s story ends, it moves on to the next one, and the world remains however you left it – the characters you killed remain dead, the enemies that escaped may end. on “wanted” posters, the cities you have not saved will have been conquered by the creatures. You can even recruit old characters into your partner and go on an adventure with them, and each one will bring something unique to a fight. Each character can use all sorts of weapons – shotguns, assault rifles, pistols, bows – but they are also imbued with magical powers that make them feel distinct, whether you’re summoning tornadoes with the protector or overwhelming enemies as humans. pig.

A new perspective –

Each character shows the world from an entirely new perspective. Like the man-pig, for example, some people will be hostile to you because you will be, you know, a man who eats corpses and who has the head of a pig. Remember a little the way the initial classes of Vampire: The Masquerade – Bloodlines they altered the experience, and the small-scale nature of each story fits this structure perfectly: it encourages roleplay with each character, no matter how you see them. When you have to talk to a jeweler as the pig man, you will crawl into town at night, check that no one is around, and kick in the shop door – no need to alight from a smokestack when you are there. scariest thing in town.

Yes, there is a button dedicated exclusively to football. As we all know, kicks in video games are spectacular: Deathloop, Bulletstorm, Dark Messiah: Of Might and Magic – all of these games are elevated by a nice boot kick. They are all great and they all have a key to football. Coincidences? No. Weird West also has a button dedicated to football: kick doors down, kick oil barrels, making them lose the black liquid before setting them on fire, kick open windows, kick enemies, kick them after they’re dead. Jane Bell even has supernatural power that amplifies her kick and allows her to kick baddies all over the map. In a fight, you can kick someone hard enough to throw them into a saloon window. You may have saved that city from the Stillwaters, but the saloon owner will hate you to the death now.

Smooth as a twin-stick shooter –

The action is fluid. The game (which has also been on Xbox Game Pass since day one) is like a twin-stick shooter, but the aim assist is perfectly balanced: it doesn’t lock enemies, but is smart enough to take into account the different elevations. It is so accurate that you can throw a bottle into the air and shoot it halfway up. That accuracy is important because death comes pretty fast if you don’t use the right cover and movement to drive enemies away. You won’t really need the Hotline Miami reflexes, but we are not too far. If nothing else, here’s a tool you can use to check the pitch. Combined with a variety of weapon skills and ghostly powers, you can make a bullet-time dive in any direction, slowing time as you dodge bullets and shoot backwards like in a John Woo movie.

As this is an immersive sim, there is also a range of environmental dangers, from the aforementioned oil barrels to the crates of TNT. Investigate the battlefield before starting a fight, prepare it well, and the fights can be over in seconds. Ignite a spark in a cloud of toxic fumes and it will explode as a result. Shoot a lantern and it will start a fire, which could start a larger fire on a puddle of oil. Hit some ammo, and you will see it crackle and crackle, firing shells into the area and killing anyone around in a lethal fireworks display of sorts. Launch a magical tornado and it could pick up a bonfire, transforming into an elemental whirlwind and sucking you in before burning you to death. It’s easy enough to mess and self-destruct if you’re not careful. Battles can sometimes be hard to read, especially when you have two allies on your team, but this is rarely a problem. You just have to pay attention and be aware of your surroundings.

Like the Shadow of Mordor –

In a way, this all seems intentional. Pushing to pay attention during the fights, the game opens your eyes to the world around you and enriches your time with the game. That coffin outside the saloon with the body branded as a cheater? Take a look at the pack of cards in her breast pocket. The major who wants you to force people to give up their land? Why not investigate his property first and see if he has any skeletons in his basement. Weird West always has something more to tell than its icons and on-screen notifications let you think, and it makes you feel smart when you understand something about a character off the main path – it makes you feel like it’s really your story.

The Vendetta System is another thing that adds a lot to this feeling: it’s a kind of Nemesis system from Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor watered down. Kill someone’s relative, bring them back alive for a bounty, or let them escape in a fight, and they’ll start a revenge on you. popping up with some ally at some point in history. Similarly, make some friends and they may appear to help you when something goes wrong for you.

Weird West, the verdict –

Weird West is basically everything you’d expect from a studio made up of former Arkane developers: deep, rich and intelligent. It’s a game that constantly says “yes”, and at its peak it recognizes all the decisions you’ve made. Respect the player and their choices, from start to finish, by telling an entirely original story that manages to avoid the clichés about cowboys.

Written by Kirk McKeand for GLHF