Weird West Previews
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With WolfEye Studios' isometric immersive sim Weird West scheduled to go live in a couple months, on January 11, 2022, we're treated to a number of hands-on previews that can help us better understand this intriguing title. You can find a few of those below.
Let's start with IGN's video:
Then check out what they have to say:
Frankly, the only notable concern I have about Weird West is its optimization before its January 11 release date. The gunplay is visceral, but the controls could be a little tighter. A number of my firefights devolved into both sides circle-strafing around each other, waiting for someone's health to drop to zero, which doesn't encapsulate the high-minded tactical flair that Wolfeye is going for. I also experienced one hard-crash to desktop, and a hilarious bug in which a cowboy devolved into a horrible polygonal monstrosity after I knocked him out. Those issues will likely be ironed out when Weird West is in the public's hands, and if Wolfeye pulls it off, players might finally have the occult, grimdark western we've all been waiting for.
Whether you run into a pack of bandits or a pack of traveling merchants on your journey across the shrouded map, both will rob you of something. And that’s why Weird West works, at least in the early hours I previewed. Despite having considerable influence over the scenarios you can find yourself in, the world repeatedly reminds you that you're insignificant, that there's much more going on than what you can see, and that to make it through, you'll need a bit of luck. Even your own character seems to be not of this plane, marked with a sign that asks a larger question you'll hopefully answer as you return to the same world via the four other characters. Weird West promises that decisions and relationships you make as one character will ripple out to the next.
Regardless of what you decide to do, combat plays out the same way mechanically. You use either your WASD keys or your left joystick to move around the area and your mouse or right stick to aim a sightline on-screen in classic twin-stick shooter fashion. Different guns have different ranges and damage outputs, and fortunately, switching between them is easy even in the heat of an intense battle. I especially like that Weird West isn’t super generous with ammunition, too, because it forced me to cycle through all the weapons at my disposal quite often.
In my couple of hours with Weird West, it was these combat scenarios that intrigued me most. I began to view them as small puzzles that doubled as opportunities to gun down some local gang members, and in doing so, Weird West’s more immersive sim-nature shined.
Something else about Weird West that feels particularly intriguing is how player choices can have knock-on impacts later down the line. Helping NPCs can see them noted as a friend for life, who can then turn up to support the player in firefights, while the game's reputation system will no doubt also impact on how friendly or aggressive certain groups are. Enemy characters can also get grudges against the player, for instance if a character's gang boss has been killed, and they may turn up at a later point to try and kill the player character, feeling like a slight nod to the Nemesis system.
Chances are Weird West won’t have the same level of polish applied to it as a bigger-budget release from Arkane, but it’s obvious that it has just as much love, if not more. It also appears to be deeper and more daring. After playing it for just a handful of hours, it’s clear that this is a game that’s going to have a lot of fans. Ultimately though, the true value of Weird West will only be revealed when we’ve been able to go hands-on with its other four protagonist, and witness the full story that unfolds. Or our story, at least.
For all of the things Weird West tries to do, it ends up feeling like a mixed bag. It does the role-playing stuff really well, whereas the action doesn’t quite hit the mark for me. It opted for an almost twin-stick approach to the controls, which ultimately felt imperfect and cumbersome, to say the least. As a result, I steered clear of all-out combat where I could, deciding to take an uncharacteristic quiet approach. It made for a fun change of pace, although I feel the clumsiness of the gunplay left me starved of the possibility I know the game offers. And there is a wealth of it, although every so often I’d try something clever—like throwing a candelabra into an oil spill to start a blaze—only for nothing to happen.
With a gamepad, the combat is a little more manageable if you’re only aiming for the bare essentials like aiming and squeezing the trigger. All of the extended combat options, like abilities and even kicking, are a mess of hot-keys that really made any instance of fighting in this game a trial.
