REVIEW : West of Dead (PS5)
I’ve never been happier to see a witch. In another game, she may be an end-of-level boss, wearing an antlered skull and emanating the kind of presence you feel long before you see, “like a storm sweeping in,” according to Ron Perlman’s tar-thick voiceover. In West of Dead, a roguelike set in a dingy wild west underworld, your interactions with her are the only way to achieve consistent advancement.
It always starts at the bar. Death spits you right back here, minus whatever weapons, upgrades, and abilities you picked up on your last run, no matter how deep you get into the crypts, the snowcapped wilds where canines creep, or the darkest mines of purgatory. So you dust yourself down and return to the crypts, this time with a handful of level 1 guns for company.
It’s always only a few turns until the gunfire begins. The combat in West of Dead combines twin-stick shooting with a cover system, as well as a few extra tactical twists like lights in some rooms that stun nearby enemies and loot charms that can, for example, cut your reload time in half or recover some health if you dive into cover quickly after taking a hit.
It’s neither a Frozen Synapse 2 nor a Superhot with a single game-changing innovation that fundamentally reimagines shooting people. It’s a simple structure, yet it expands on itself at precisely the right place to keep you engaged in West of Dead’s bleak limbo. My first two or three runs in the Crypts were stumbling catastrophes, but the tempo and nuance of the battle gradually began to settle in. I counted how many hits from my six-shooter it took to stun gun-toting foes and how many shots from them it took to damage the cover I preferred to hide behind. I noticed that the zombie-like melee enemies liked to follow you back into the previous corridor, where they were simpler to defeat.
West of Dead excels in telegraphing every small facet of combat, from the time an adversary is alerted to your existence to the moment they’ve locked their aim on you, and only a frame-perfect dodge roll will keep you safe if you’re not behind cover. When all of the timings become second nature, you begin to play automatically rather than intentionally. You’re always in cover, always aware of how many empty chambers each pistol has, and always on the lookout for the next safe spot to roll into.
The controls and visual feedback are both smooth enough that the barrier between you and what you see yourself doing dissolves. It’s critical that a game like this, which wants you to be okay with losing everything and beginning over, feels both fair and consistently readable. Tick, tick, tick
My first two or three runs in the Crypts were stumbling catastrophes, but the tempo and nuance of the battle gradually began to settle in.
Those foundations are expanded on in each successive region as different enemy types—the hounds in the second map, by the way, can fuck off—force you into different strategies, and thanks to the perma-death feature, each combat feels a little more meaningful than the last. Especially when they involve big bags of biceps with butcher knives that can murder you in one hit or enormous sacks of pus that run at you, ready to explode as soon as they get close enough to ruin your day.
Having Iron and Sin on your side makes things a little easier. Strangely, not a folk band, but the two currencies found in the aftermath of fights, which can be given to a travelling merchant in return for gun and item improvements, or in the latter’s case, given to the witch to ‘purge’ and unlock goods, some of which you keep after dying.
It wouldn’t be nearly as simple to hit ‘New Run’ after another heartbreaker in the Mines if West of Dead’s combat wasn’t so masterfully woven into that cryptic landscape. The aesthetics are striking, and everything appears to be cel-shaded, from the items to the lighting. Hearing Hellboy’s speech while immersed in a murky underworld of inky black outlines seems very Mike Mignola, and the melancholy guitar riffs, circling crows. Whiskey-gargled voiceovers all contribute to a genuine sense of atmosphere.
Perlman’s story returns just frequently enough to keep the story of West of Dead fresh in your mind: a gunslinger traversing the afterlife without a compass, trying to figure out how to travel either east or turns to the camera, winking West of Dead. Snippets of conversation with NPCs, artefacts unearthed in the tunnels and taken to the witch for examination, and boss encounters all reveal glimpses into a past that fully embraces the term “show, don’t tell.”
It’s not just about beating the game but also about comprehending it. Those two motives keep irritation at bay for a longer period than would otherwise occur in a game with such blatant disrespect for your feeling of progression. But, of course, frustration will strike at some point. On the rare occasions when you may blame the game, the camera work and lighting are to blame. The zoom and focal point can occasionally go wild, leaving you squinting at small enemy specs, especially when retreating out of an arena. Meanwhile, backtracking because you missed a doorway shrouded by shade takes a significant amount of time out of your sprint.
Procedural generation, a roguelike staple, naturally becomes a double-edged weapon as well. Some runs allow you to blast through a specific area in a matter of minutes, picking up some useful weapon and character upgrades along the way. However, on less fortunate efforts, a significant amount of time is spent backtracking and examining offshoots from chambers missed the first time. Later on, the ability to teleport reduces this dead time, which is fine until you die again. Still, at least you’re not walking through the same halls and arenas again and over.
REVIEW : Streets Of Rage 4 – Mr. X Nightmare (PC)
