David's Guide To Westerns - Latest Computer game reviews

Desperados III (2020)

Sun, 17 Apr 2022 14:47:20 +0000

The Desperados series is a set of stealth strategy games where the player controls a small group of characters (each with their own unique abilities) from a top-down view. The aim is largely to pick-off enemies without being detected. In this third instalment the hero (John Cooper) goes up against a local mining baron (DeWitt) and his henchman (Frank) against whom Cooper has a (somewhat predictable) personal vendetta.

The plot is not phenomenally innovative but does the job – it has provides an authentic old-west feel that’s largely an excuse to hang the gameplay onto. The level design I generally really liked: there’s a decent variety of locations which all have a unique and interesting “western” atmosphere. The one semi-complaint about the plot/setting was the character Isabelle. I didn’t really like her supernatural voodoo abilities as they didn’t really fit with the straight western setting. On the other hand the abilities were generally pretty interesting from a gameplay point-of-view but just slightly jarring from a setting point-of-view.

The gameplay is the main point here – the stealth mechanic is enjoyable: at times it gets a bit repetitive (you’re mainly repeating the same tricks to distract/lure an enemy out of sight of other enemies so that they can be knocked off). However there’s a decent variety of other options for the more creative player (i.e. not me!). There’s some interesting combinations that open up with Isabelle’s “link” and “take over” abilities (much as I didn’t like the premise of the abilities). There’s also some amusing secondary challenges – one that I enjoyed was a level with a railway running down the middle, where enemies could be dispatched by tricking them into standing on the line and being run over.

It’s always a tricky balance with this kind of gameplay between having a “right” way to do it with interesting set-piece solutions and letting the player come up with their own solutions. Generally I think the game got this roughly right - using secondary optional objectives (“badges”) to hint at the set-piece solutions but with generally enough freedom not to be forced to follow them.

The is an excellent entry in the series and probably the one to start with (it’s been a while since I played the first game but my suspicion is that it’s probably a slightly “better” game, but a little dated at this stage). Definitely enjoyable and well worth playing.

Freddy Pharkas: Frontier Pharmacist (1993)

Sat, 13 Jan 2018 17:28:05 +0000

A mid-90s adventure game set in the old west. The story concerns the titular character: a former gunslinger who took up pharmacy to escape the shame of having his ear shot off (I think – some of the motivation isn’t astonishingly clear). He finds the town he lives in slowly closing down and moving out and suspects fowl play.

This suffers from the main flaw typical to the 90s adventure game – namely that many of the puzzles feel too obtuse and you need to solve them by either spending hours clicking randomly to see what works or by looking up the solution on the internet (and looking them up often results in feeling “I never would have thought of that”). Being a Sierra game (as opposed to Lucasarts, the other major adventure game maker of the era) it is possible for the player to die, but unlike some Sierra games it isn’t really possible to get yourself into an unsolvable dead end that requires replaying more than the last few minutes.

In terms of the content, the general western feel is pretty good, helped by some nicely drawn graphics and a decent pastiche theme song that fills in the back story. I didn’t feel that it offered a particularly amusing or insightful western parody though: much of the humour came from mild innuendo (which I did enjoy) rather than a good use of the setting and the periodic pharmacy segments were a bit long and restrictive and mostly seemed designed to ensure the player had the manual rather than advance the story or setting.

In summary, this is somewhat restricted by the era and genre of game it was made in, and isn’t really a classic of that format. It isn’t terribly by any means, but also isn’t worth seeking out for anyone who isn’t a fan of 90s adventure games.

Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood (2009)

Sat, 01 Feb 2014 14:27:04 +0000

The second in the Call of Juarez series, and a prequel to the first game. It tells the story of Ray and Thomas McCall, stretching from their time together fighting for the Confederacy in the Civil War, their time as fugitives, their quest for hidden Mexican treasure and their subsequent falling out. It effectively explains how Ray ended up as the deranged gun-toting preacher from the first game. The story is really the best bit of the game, with nice callbacks to classic westerns (the introductory civil war bit is clearly inspired by The Good, The Bad and The Ugly for example), and the combination of the story and the settings give it really Western feel.

Unfortunately the gameplay is a bit fiddly. It's often a bit difficult to see where the baddies and shooting from and you can easily be dead before you've managed to stop them. The duels too feel quite chance-based (I suspect it's difficult to come up with a sensible gameplay mechanic for the classic western stand-off, but I think the follow-up Call of Juarez: Gunslinger does better). The idea that you can play through most of it as either of the two brothers adds a bit of re-playability, but the differences between them aren't huge.

In summary, it's a decent—but not fantastic—shooter, improved by a top quality story-line. It also loses a bit of the variety of play from the original (the differences between the two brothers are smaller than the difference between the two characters in the original) but also avoids the slightly frustrating stealth mode of the original. (Whether that's an improvement depends on how you found the stealth sections of the original – I didn't find them too bad).

I played the XBox 360 version.

Call of Juarez: Gunslinger (2013)

Sat, 18 Jan 2014 21:36:31 +0000

A fourth and, from a story point of view, unrelated entry into the Call of Juarez series. In many ways this is the best Western shooter since Outlaws. It also has some obvious weaknesses—from a computer game point of view more than a western point of view—but these are fairly easily overlooked due to the quality of the storytelling.

The story concerns "Silas Greaves", a legendary bounty hunter who's wandering into a saloon in his old age and is relating the story of his life. It's fairly immediately obvious that he may be exaggerating his adventures, if not outright lying (this provides a nice way out of the problem that Billy the Kid is portrayed as having killed an amazing 21 men, but most western computer game heroes blast their way through hundreds of hired guns – it just isn't true). There's various points throughout the story, when to amusing effect he changes his story (thus changing the game level or making you replay a section in a different way) having talked himself into a corner or been called out of some fact. In one level you play the Dalton brother's bank robbery from three different accounts of the events. The reactions from his listeners—their increasing incredulity at his exploits (and how he always conveniently has some dynamite on his person when needed)---are also entertaining. It's mentioning that the ending of the story is genuinely quite good and quite resonant, and perhaps more so than you'd expect from what initially seems to be one man's tale of how he killed every famous outlaw in the old west.

Some criticisms of the game. It's a bit short (but it's also cheap, so fair enough!). It's very linear (in that you're forced through each level in a very specific order), and at times this is pretty obvious. The invisible walls marking the edges of the explorable area are pretty easy to find, slightly breaking the illusion. While the storytelling is inventive, the gameplay isn't particularly with it being a straightforward "shoot lots of people to win" type game. I did occasionally get frustrated at the "and then this convenient bridge appeared" mode of storytelling, particularly on "the attempted train-robbery on a viaduct" level, where I felt it was over-used. There's also a lot of reuse of level design: I'm pretty sure there's only one town set for the entire game, and it's just approached from different angles (this could be a concession to the idea that it's mostly in his imagination, but I'm pretty sure the budget played a part).

However, for the entertainment value (the gameplay is fun, even if not original), and for the price, it's well worth the time. (I also enjoyed the fact that most of the enemy taunts sounded like they'd come from the same recording session that produced the Outlaws ones).

I played the XBox 360 version. There's no evidence to suggest this is much different from the Playstation 3 or PC version.

Gun (2005)

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:26:32 +0000

Disclaimer: Like many game reviews here, this is written a good chunk after the fact, and so may be a little vague on actual details.

At the time of release I recall being pretty impressed with Gun. I suspect in light of Red Dead Redemption it's aged slightly badly, since it does many of the same things—being mostly open-world with significant opportunities to try side-missions such as bounty-hunting or herding cattle—but Red Dead Redemption largely does them better.

The big weakness I recall at the time was that the world didn't quite seem big enough: obviously a game is never going to model genuinely hundreds of miles of terrain, but everything seemed slightly too close in Gun and thus immersion was broken slightly.

The story is a largely straightforward revenge affair involving an (adopted) father (played by Kris Kristofferson) murdered by a railroad-baron who's after a lost city full of gold (the actual story is obviously more complicated, but not to worry!). The game itself was not too difficult, except for the fights with the bosses, which came across as slightly gimmicky at times. I never managed to defeat the final boss, which involves the railroad baron dressed in armour, who could only be defeated by shooting his dynamite in the air.

Dead Man's Hand (2004)

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 21:07:36 +0000

Disclaimer: This review is written with so much hindsight as to be almost useless for any real detail. However, it gives a recalled general impression.

Dead Man's Hand is a comparatively straight forward shoot-'em-up set in the Old West. A slightly novel variation is that the play can only carry a very limited selection of guns, providing an extra challenge. My recollection was that quite a bit of time was spent chasing after limited ammunition too. A further unique addition was the ability to ride horses, which was slightly fiddly—but provided there was a long straight line to ride in—quite fun. Looking at it now the graphics seem somewhat weak (i.e. it comes across as more of an Unreal 2 mod than a polished independent game), however I'm not sure how much of that is just the passage of time: at the time I remember getting a faint "mod" impression, but don't recall it looking too bad.

A fair general conclusion is that it was entertaining enough to play, but largely inessential. I suspect the passage of time has rendered that conclusion more true than ever.

MobyGames link

Red Dead Redemption (2010)

Sun, 10 Feb 2013 20:37:08 +0000

The comment that this is basically Grand Theft Horse is probably a fair starting point. None-the-less, it's clearly the best Western game that's been made for a long time (if ever: I still prefer Outlaws, but I think that's largely nostalgia talking).

The game is nominally a sequel to Red Dead Revolver, but I don't think there's any continuity (I haven't played the original, but I didn't notice anything). The hero is John Marston—a reformed outlaw—who is coerced into hunting down some of his former associates by the forces of the law. The majority of the time it's fairly open-world, although access to a greater portion of the world becomes available as the game progresses, with the player free to pursue the main missions, take on other missions such as bounty-hunting, or just ride around shooting stuff.

The one area the game is really successful at is creating the illusion of a truly big environment, while not being so big that riding anywhere takes days. The game "Gun" is an interesting precursor/comparison here, since it tried to do many of the same things, but failed slightly when it came to the West feeling "big enough". The area that was slightly disappointing was the integration of the main story with the player's other actions: throughout much of the game the players actions determines people's attitude to them, however the story is absolutely fixed whatever they do. Obviously, this is the same as for many other games, but it felt slightly off in the otherwise free open-world setting.

A minor niggling point that bugged me much more than it should have (my inner pedant...) was the second of the two songs (at a couple of points in the story the game decides to play a song relating to that bit of story). The song has the lyric "off the radar" which is obviously historically wrong, and kind of broke the immersion.

I haven't played either the multiplayer, so the any of the extra content available for purchase, so couldn't comment on those.

Wanted Guns (2005)

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 14:15:14 +0000

Disclaimer: it's been years since I played this, and I have little intention of going back and doing so again.

This really isn't very good. There's some third-person overhead view levels, a few riding levels and some first-person on-rails shooting levels. My abiding memory is that the game had turned the mouse sensitivity right down (with no way to increase it) as a way to increase the difficulty. I didn't make it all the way through.

Link

Outlaws (1997)

Tue, 29 Jan 2013 12:59:28 +0000

Where are you Marshall?

Retired Marshall James Anderson has is away on a shopping trip when his wife is killed and his daughter kidnapped by an evil railroad baron who wants to turf him off his land. He then goes and shoots his way through about 9 levels until he's killed the railroad baron and recovered his daughter. There are also some extras reliving his days of Marshalling.

Objectively, this probably isn't a particularly good game. The graphics were pretty dated in 1997 when it was released, and have the tendency to stretch when looking up and down. The levels are largely a straightforward, run around in a set order shooting stuff affair, with the exception of "Sanctuary", my favourite, where the Marshall has free reign of a town. Multiplayer for a 15+ year-old game has largely vanished, however at the time it was quite innovative for a first-person shooter, in that it had a choice of different characters with unique—if not entirely balanced—attributes.

However, it remains one of my favourite games. The gameplay is fun, although simplistic. The music is fantastic, although fairly blatently "inspired" by Morricone. The cutscenes between levels are generally good (this is my personal favourite). What's not to like?

It should also be noted that on the hardest difficultly level the game genuinely is quite challenging, with little room for mistakes since the player can sustain so little damage. That said, it mostly requires fast reactions to shoot enemies before they shoot you; steath doesn't really feature in it.

A few small bugs:

The "delete" key doesn't work on modern versions of Windows, making it hard to correct typos.
The UK version seems to be missing about half of the opening cutscene, available to view here. This was obviously more frustrating in the days before Youtube.