Weird West

Fitting that a game set in the old West is a bit dry. Weird West is close to scratching that imsim itch with a WRPG twist, but it's just a tad too undercooked to take it all the way home. The combat is wild even on a basic level; I've never really seen twin-stick shooters done like this, with abilities and cooldowns and environmental hazards. Even the way you have to lead your shots lends some depth to it, but it also exposes the jank of the whole affair. So much enemy interaction is based on loose environmental context, such as using elemental barrels or fire or freak tornadoes and rainstorms to inflict particular ailments on particular enemies, but lining these up properly feels all wrong. I mostly resorted to pure stealth when I could, which works better than other games of this type, but the top-down perspective still gives it problems, notably with tracking sound. Actual shootouts are just a mess, especially on very hard, and with no automatic weapons, kinaesthetic feedback is pretty bad by the standards of a twin stick game.

The actual RPG on top is also quite sloppy, but not for lack of trying. Major story events have impressive reactivity outside of the very final chapter, and the hook of five different mini-stories that culminate in a world-ending plot is enticing and gives room for getting to absorb the setting and the ripples of what goes on within it over time. It's the more Fallout 1 sandbox WRPG on top where things get messy. Once a player character's journey is done, they essentially become any other NPC. Same with major villains left alive to terrorise other characters; they just become another bounty to hunt, and they may as well be as randomly generated as your other marks. With only a couple of bespoke sidequests and locations, all the charm of the setting and its butterfly effect plotlines fades away. This might be forgiveable if everything were just a bit snappier; Weird West isn't long by any means, but the constant travelling and just bloody awful inventory management adds up, and distracts from the increasingly few moments of wonder.

It's a shame it couldn't stick the landing, either, because most of the pieces are there. Some character arcs, like that of the Pigman, feel suitably fleshed out and have a wonderful pay-off. Others, like Sheriff Albright, start strong but flame out, and many other characters have the impact of a flounder on the beach. Despite some great world-building in visual design, scattered notes, idle dialogue and flavor text, pointing to a dense criss-crossing political powder keg, which excellently highlights the different perspectives you play through, the actual characters within the world don't fill up much space. Honestly the whole game's atmosphere feels a bit lifeless; no voice acting outside the narration, sparse music and ambience, lots of loading screens, and this is all amplified by the many times your actions seem to get no-sold within the world. I don't know why major villains becoming just another target is such a bummer, but it is. Weird West is like 35% bespoke craftsmanship and 65% RNG blehness.

Also not helping are all the glitches. Interface screwiness and some frame drops are okay for an indie game of this scope and ambition. Lack of interstitial animations in stealth, mistimed dialogue flags and bad collision are not. Terrible friendly AI makes hiring old player characters a liability, but you lose a lot of power in not doing so. It's partially my fault for playing these games with tons of save scumming, but this all adds up to slow the game down and make Weird West a drag. There are more than enough brilliant splashes and a generally inventive combat system to make it worth it due to its relative brevity; even the ending was okay, despite being a rip-off of Prey 2017's social experiment ending. But it is too far from a masterwork to recommend as more than a curio. If the gunplay was just a tiny bit tighter and the world a tiny bit more receptive to your impact, it would be magical.

BB#13
Pc (beta)

Extremely fun to play, there are a lot of alternatives and you can approach every mission the way you prefer, great atmosphere, great stories, the 5 playable characters are very good and diverse and with cool and unique perks, there are tons of secrets all over the map, day-and-night mechanics, deep lore

BUT

there are a few glitches and bugs (stunned horses, glitched vendors, people duplicated, a few freezes during a rainy day) (beta), the IA is stupid (= can't hear a shotgun shot a few meters away, the walking patterns seem random sometimes).