Luck powers special weapons and abilities and influences the success of normal shots. Permeable materials such as canvas can be penetrated by gunfire and many weapons can shoot through walls.Ĭharacters have two important, interacting stats: health and luck. Weapons can have two or three special attacks - like fanning a pistol for a wider series of targets - and the game’s cover system is more nuanced than in many games. As in most turn based strategy games, characters have a limited number of action points which can be used for moving, firing a weapon, reloading, or using “spells” like healing. While this pre-encounter preparation certainly requires some careful thought and planning, once the fight begins things become much more tactically complex and interesting. There is a collectible card game element as well, and each character may carry a hand of cards, which are basically passive buffs or special abilities, including some really gruesome ones like cannibalism. Are you supposed to meet your new love interest Francis? The game will make you circle back to that option even if you don’t head there willingly.įor each skirmish, the player may choose up to four characters and each character can be equipped from a common pool of weapons, clothing (armor), consumables (things like healing herbs and potions that increase speed or luck), and magical charms or amulets. It’s one of those games that seems to give the player choices when in fact it doesn’t. The overworld story isn’t terrible, just sometimes a little dishonest. At frequent intervals one of the choices will result in a conflict or some sort of enemy encounter, and then the game switches to turn-based combat, which is the potatoes and gravy of the game. Often at least one of the choices will require enough cash that the player will need to head into the mines to earn gold, or barter at the trading post. At each location there is a menu of choices: leave, go deeper into the mine, pay for information, etc. The broad strokes of the story are conveyed through the mechanic of moving around an overworld map spotted with locations for the player to visit, places like mines and saloons, trading posts and country churches, and outlaw outposts. Along the way the core group picks up allies and minor characters add their story arcs to the stew. Washouts from the Oregon Trail, Warren and company must scrabble together a living mining for gold as they move deeper and deeper into encounters that turn literally more and more monstrous. Hard West, like so many classic Westerns, begins as a tale of retribution and unwilling heroism as the lead character, Warren, journeys with his father to rescue his mother, and then avenge her death. It does a better than decent job at both the setting and the strategic encounters, only really misfiring when it comes to the bigger picture story that drives the game. Perhaps the best thing about Creative Forge Games’ Hard West is that it isn’t just another sci-fi fantasy game, but takes a cue from the turn-based strategy of XCOM and transposes it to the Old West, adding supernatural elements into the mix. Maybe the Borderlands and Fallouts and Wastelands of the world have made the frontier Western irrelevant. After all, the Old West was a time - at least in the popular imagination - of clear cut heroes and villains, brutal weapons and haunted landscapes. Seems like for every hundred sci-fi shooters, high fantasy RPGs or modern warfare simulations, there’s maybe one game about that iconic American period. Quick: name ten great video games with an Old West setting.
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