Weird West (2022)

IMMERSIVE SIM - Players follow five intertwined stories set in a supernatural Wild West. Their fates are bound by a greater cosmic force, and each must confront personal challenges and uncover dark truths about the world, leading to a climactic revelation that ties their stories together

PROS:

++ Storytelling & narrative. Weird West takes its central idea from Prey's Mooncrash DLC in the sense that you'll be playing through five separate characters in order to complete the game. The difference is that the five protagonists in this game each have solid individual stories. Jane Bell (former bounty hunter), Cl'erns Qui'g (the pigman), Across Waters (protector of the Lost Fire nation), Desiderio Rios (a werewolf), and The Oneirist (a witch) were all interesting perspectives. And the five of them are tools that are used in order to address the overarching narrative that is revealed in the end and that is hinted about throughout the five characters' journeys. Speaking of the overarching narrative, I really liked the end reveal of the immortals doing all of this experimentation and soul-transferring just so they can end their immortality. It was a cool ending in my opinion.

++ Art style & presentation. Even though the graphics in-game wasn't all that great, I really liked the stylish portraits of each character. I just love the art style they use for their illustrations. I also really liked the music. Even though there wasn't that many tracks, I still think it added a lot to the atmosphere.

++ Flexibility in approach. Although it doesn't reach the immersive sim highs of Colantonio's previous games (Dishonored & Prey), I still found that the immersive aspects of the game was solid. You can go guns blazing and literally kill everyone in your path (even essential NPCs), or you can complete the game without killing a single human. Both combat and stealth are viable ways to approach enemy camps. I also appreciated that there were a lot of reactive elements: oil & chemical barrels, setting fire to wooden structures and vegetation, being able to light up your arrows using your environment, the ability to stack objects in order to reach higher places, using explosives to break down rock and doors, infiltrating houses through the chimney using rope, etc. These all add up to a very satisfying immersive sim game.

++ Interesting world & lore. The world they built was truly interesting. I really liked some of the characters, and would have loved to explore this world if it had been fully fleshed out. The horrific origins of the Pigmen, the cannibalistic Sirens, the war between the werewolves and witches, the presence of the Lost Fire nation, the brutality of the Stillwater gang, and the existence of immortals are all groups of people. This world has so much potential, but it just needs a larger budget to make it into a fully-realized world.

++ Nimpossible mode. An alternative way to play the campaign that can prove to be a more interesting and engaging way to experience the game. It's essentially a permadeath mode and the only way to gain the opportunity to resurrect after death is by collecting "Nimp Heads" and having them in your inventory. This mode eliminates save-scumming and encourages a smarter approach to the game.

++ Mod support. There's not many mods for the game, but I always love it when a game openly supports mods. The most interesting of the bunch is the first-person mode that allows you to transform the game to resemble more traditional immersive sims. The change in perspective truly makes a difference.

CONS:

-- Budget limitations. A lot of the miscellaneous complaints I have with the game can really be boiled down to the fact that this was their first game and so their budget was quite limited in comparison to their ambitions. Map layouts repeated often making most locations look the same. Zooming in to character models reveal PS1-looking characters. There was a lack of voiced protagonists. The choice of making the game isometric in view, rather than first-person, which really hurts since it aims to be an immersive sim. And the overall jankiness of the game can also be attributed to the budget.

-- Camera. Eventually, I got to the point where the camera was manageable. But my biggest issue is that the camera only had three preset distances. This made it so that I was never really satisfied with the view, often thinking it was way too far or way too close for my liking.

-- Combat. Most of the complaints in the combat department come from console players and from those who use the default aiming setting. And I can definitely understand those criticisms since those aforementioned factors can really limit one's enjoyment. But since I played with K&M and with the new experimental aiming, I didn't encounter that issue. My issue with the combat is that it's just too straightforward, and didn't feel all too great. There were powers (both gun abilities and character powers) that can be used, but there was no need to use them since combat wasn't too difficult. Shooting the guns didn't feel great because the rate of fire felt inconsistent, and shots seemingly vary in success rate. By far my favorite part of the gunplay is the Max Payne dive where time slows down and you can unload clips on your enemies. This felt great and powerful to use. Overall, combat wasn't terrible, but it never rose above being serviceable.

I liked this one quite a bit. I didn't finish it, but sunk quite a few hours into it. I enjoyed my time with it but eventually, I got to a point in which I just felt... "I've seen enough." I really try my hardest to get to the credits in most things I play and so often times I get to that point. In a shorter game I would've seen it through but I knew I had a long ways to go.

So, although I'm happy I spent the amount of time in the world as I did.. It kind of fell flat for me and eventually lost me. It lost me enough, to where I'm taking it out of my backlog too. I'm officially saying, this game is good and for those who like this genre potentially amazing! But I'm gonna be completely done with it now. Watch the trailers, if you think it looks cool. You will enjoy your time with it.

The refreshing world of twin-stick shooter Weird West, created by Raphaël Colantonio's (Arx Fatalis, Dishonored, Prey) new studio, sucks you in quite quickly.

Though it’s not exactly unique (it’s not even unique in its release year), there are only a handful of otherworldly, supernatural-filled fantasy universes set in the Wild West, with its RPG pedigree and immersive sim elements doing the rest of the heavy lifting to set it apart from similar settings. This is further pressed by an immediately attractive art style (which reminds me of This War of Mine), a charismatic narrator, fairly comprehensive lore, and a world that feels, for the most part, properly reactive to the player. To wrap it all up nicely, the overarching story is actually pretty interesting, one which tries to steer clear from the usual tropes by giving you six narratively connected characters to play with, each with their own background and layers of motivation, though admittedly some goals feel a lot more urgent than others. I thought at first I would have a problem with being pushed from one character to the next, but not only did I accept it pretty quickly, I actually welcomed the change of pace and different abilities, which aren’t essential to use but, in true Arkane style, are pretty fun to experiment with. Plus you can still recruit previous characters in the subsequent stories, so everything still feels somewhat tied together. You also keep general abilities from character to character and you can easily recover all your loot, which is a pretty cool way of implementing something like this.

There are some issues with Weird West that keep it from being great, however. Unlike so many releases though, the main problems present here feel like they were necessary compromises due to the studio’s indie nature and consequently lower budget. And the main one, to me, is the lack of voiced protagonists. Brilliant narrator aside, who only chimes in from time to time, all other characters’ vocal sounds amount to gibberish instead of actual dialogue. Not all games, of course, require voice acting. But in a title like this, a solid audio cast would immediately add a ton of appeal to the narrative threads. Another issue I had with Weird West was its world building. As much as I like the way they fleshed out the lore and some of the map areas, a lot of places (particularly cities and their layouts) seem like they go heavy on recycling assets, ending up mostly looking like carbon copies of each other. These two shortcomings are annoying, but it's hard lay the blame for them at the feet of such a small, recently created studio.

Weird West’s remaining turnoffs, on the other hand, are a bit harder to excuse precisely because I don’t know how much budgetary constraints would be responsible for them. The main offender is far and away the camera. I’m all fine with a competent top-down / isometric view, but this game's camera is rough. Not only are angles are far from ideal, you only get 3 zoom presets, which feels overly restrictive and take away quite a bit of the viewing agency. I hear there's a mod on PC that allows for a 1st person camera, which might actually be the best available option right now if you play it there. Another thumbs down relates to combat. This doesn’t feel like a very polished twin-stick experience where shooting is concerned, so much so that I quickly opted for the alternative aiming system. The game labels it as ‘experimental’, but I personally didn't come across any issues and definitely recommend it over the default option. But even then, being surrounded by enemies will likely result in death at higher levels, simply because combat doesn’t feel fluid enough to allow for much leeway. At the same time though, AI also doesn't feel great, so engagements often end up going the opposite way and become being pretty easy affairs because, quite frankly, enemies come across as stupid and you can work around them as you wish. Finally, Weird West never really gives you a proper reason to get involved with its systems. Even though they're not necessary in your playthrough, most abilities are cool, fun and different enough between characters, so a better descriptor of this would be the economy. After the first story, you soon realise that money is no longer a problem, and therefore, things like bounties - which already barely made sense to engage with outside the first character - lose all sense of purpose. Another example is loot. Because of all the weapons you find, there is literally zero reason to waste time upgrading weapons or buying anything from stores. In other words, the most important systems in a game of this nature are there: it's just that Weird West treats them as an interconnected afterthought, not a real utility.

If you add all this to a fairly buggy experience - corpses that go flying in the air out of nowhere, sound issues, hostile status that changes to friendly on save reload, way too sensitive flames and some companion dialogue issues-, it’s easy to conclude that this game would’ve benefitted from more cooking time and, sadly, a bigger budget. All that said, however, I still definitely enjoyed my time with it. Yes, Weird West’s drawbacks are undeniable and impossible to miss, but alongside them stands a pretty interesting take on the immersive sim / RPG hybrid, with enough originality and personality to its setting and philosophy to warrant a closer look. It won't likely rock anyone's boat, but fans of Colantonio’s work are probably bound to find something to appreciate here. Especially because, if we make peace with its other problems, simply having a different camera system and more mechanical polish would’ve turned this game into something truly special. 7.5/10