REVIEW: 'Westerado: Double Barreled'

Lets face it: the Wild West is awesome. Alongside Feudal Japan, it's a setting that's just so effortlessly cool whether it's given the highbrow or the lowbrow touch. You simply cannot lose. Take any famously bad story, relocate it to the deep south circa 1880-1910 and it automatically has one redeemable trait.

So it's tempting to dismiss the appeal of the laughably named Westerado as even if the game sucked, it could've redeemed itself simply by being set in the Wild West. Thankfully, it doesn't suck. It's pretty good. But it's not brilliant.

You play as a man with no name - and this is the first of approximately a thousand spaghetti western references. Since this is a western, it's required by law that things will begin nicely but tragedy will soon strike. Sure enough, your ranch gets burned down and your family are murdered. Your task is to track down the murderer by gathering clues as to his appearance. These clues are randomly generated each time you start a new game, and you can just find the guy by accusing everyone of being the murderer until you happen to stumble across him (it's never a woman, for some strange reason). This is a hilarious and surprisingly effective way to track the guy down. I'm surprised Colombo never tried this.

"DEPLOYING TRAGIC BACK-STORY #1132453"

This is a 2D indie game on Steam, so of course it's going to look like Red Dead Redemption ported to the NES - but, despite reminding me of Custer's Revenge, the style works very well. There's a strange beauty seeing the sandy landscapes rendered in 8-bit, and despite being perpetually blocky the game remains pleasing to the eye. It's sure to age well in years to come, which is always a testament to a works visual aesthetic.

Characters dialogue is written phonetically, which gives the game personality. Whilst, as is always the case with open-world games, NPC's are recycled so rigorously I kept expecting to come across an abandoned cloning facility. But rarely did it feel like I was actually speaking to the same person. There are memorable conversations, such as the lady who adamantly refused to shut up until I pulled a gun on her. Touches like this make the game feel alive, which is impressive considering the 2D visuals.  Oh, and the music is nothing short of fantastic. Track it down and listen to it yourself if you can.

But visuals are just the icing, and I'd rather an ugly, delicious cake than a beautiful, disgusting one. Aside from this, the game does nothing original. You're not going to see a bold retelling of the Wild West formula. There is no innovative new mechanic, nor is there anything you haven't seen before. It's literally Red Dead Redemption shrunk and pixelized. But there's nothing wrong with this, it just means that you're probably better off playing other games given the choice.

The game shines when it stays true to it's open world pretensions. Discovering sections of the map, looting the places therein, and filling up my journal carries that mindlessly addictive quality that I love in open world games. I like to play these as a little treat when I finish work for the day, grabbing my controller for an hour or so...but I can't really do that with Westerado, which leads me nicely to the biggest problem.

The biggest problem with the game is that there is no manual-save system. You die, and you're sent back to your uncles with half your money swiped. At first, this seems like a great idea. It's the sweet spot between not too punishing, yet still making you really not want to die. But then you remember that this is an open world game where you can kill anyone you want. I've recently been playing Skyrim for the first time, and I'm constantly mashing the 'quick-save' button so that if I do something wrong or suddenly decide I want to commit genocide then it won't mess up my game. It also means that I can actually level up in my pick-pocketing skill without having a criminal record longer than War and Peace.

Here, you can completely screw up the game in seconds by shooting allies - meaning you cannot complete quests and cannot get vital details. This would all be fine if the game was a rougelike...but it's not. This is the kind of game you play in chunks rather than bursts, so if you impulsively decide to shoot the sheriff (but not the deputy) then you might as well start right from the very beginning (a very good place to start).

So whilst the best thing about the game is it's open nature, it's in your best interests to not shoot anyone unless they start shooting you - which, to me, kind of defeats the purpose. The whole fun of Red Dead Redemption was getting fed up with the game and shooting everyone in sight with no consequence. If you got bored with the plot then you could always have a fast-paced shootout, making your final stand atop a saloon only to wake up the next day with nothing changed. Do that here and you've made the game unwinnable without the option to reload or have everyone magically come back to life. It really takes the fun out of what should be the game's best feature.

Another annoyance is that you can accidentally shoot your allies, and your allies can accidentally shoot you. Several times I died because my trusty companion constantly shot me in the back like I was playing Left 4 Dead with a group of monkeys. It's a shame because if this was fixed then the combat would be fine. It took me a bit to get used to using the keyboard rather than the mouse to shoot, but once I did I was able to blast my way through fights with no problem. It's suitably fast-paced, and the slow-motion animation of enemies collapsing in a pool of blood whilst their hats jauntily fly off is extremely satisfying. I even like how when you get into a fight the screen goes widescreen, giving the whole thing a nice cinematic touch.

My advice, however, is to play the free version online and if you like it then by all means check out the full version. Although, it's a bit of a rip-off at £10 considering I managed to cover the whole map in less than two hours...so maybe wait until it goes down in price also.