Hard West

Loved what little of this game I got to play, but there's a game-breaking bug in the second level that prevents any progress - a bug that MANY PLAYERS run into. They promised a fix THREE YEARS AGO, swearing they would devote their resources to fixing it after their next game, Phantom Doctrine, came out. Phantom Doctrine came out in 2018. It is now the year of our misery, 2021. This is utterly inexcusable. Save your money. Don't buy this. And honestly, make a mental note to never buy a CreativeForge Games product ever again. They are fully willing to release a fatally broken game and lie about intending to fix it. What hacks!

Death has a story to tell you. It's about deals and revenge and a handsome man in a black suit who comes to you when you are dying, and he tells it in a voice like the angel Gabriel on a night shift. Mostly, though, it is a story about regrets. A classic Weird West tale: boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy lies bleeding out beside her body and sells his soul for a second shot at their killers. All narrated by Dave DeAndrea, doing a bang-up job of distracting you from threadbare prose with his woodsmoke-and-whiskey purr. Even if I didn't favour unforgiving turn-based strategy games, I'd buy Hard West just to hear the man speak. And make no mistakes – Hard West is unforgiving. An essential character takes a bullet through his soft, pale throat? Back to the start of the fight. No mid-way saves, no compromises. Hard West only makes deals with the devil himself. The fights are (appropriately) hard as hell. Your people have low health and the game has some truly nasty guns. If you're not on the side pulling the trigger, a single shot can put you down or even out. What you have on your side is luck. Luck is probably the most interesting mechanic Hard West has going. When a character dodges a bullet, they use up luck. When they're hit, it replenishes. And it's marvellous. Nothing feels more Clint Eastwood, undead gunslinger cool than dodging a shotgun blast from three feet away; nor tenser than praying you make this final killing shot because you are, quite literally, on your last legs and all out of luck. It is, in the words of Oscar Wilde, atmospheric as balls. The plot loops around and ties back on itself smartly, with emotional beats in all the right places, but they lack the build-up to land the hit. Like the knucklebones of a skeletal hand; useless without sinew and wet, red connective tissue. But it has style, and that's worth any price. Old Nick always did have the sharpest suits.

I watched the trailers for this game. Turn based gameplay, Xcom cover mechanics, set in the old west! I thought "Sign me up!" Unfortunately the honeymoon was short... I won't go over the bugs in the game because as an old gamer I'm just used to having them. Some games have less some games more but there are always bugs. What killed this game for me is the story and the practice of removing the players agency. Now take this with a grain of salt because my rating of this game is completely based on personal preference. If you like never ending darkness, negative plot after negative plot. If you like unending sadness and despair. If you like a completely on rails story that takes you out of the drivers seat no matter how good you do and makes you watch horrible things happen to characters you've invested your time in... Then this game is for you. Even at $2.99 I regret my purchase.

There's genuinely a very good little game in here, but one that's riddled with problems. For starters, it's poorly optimised, and the game frequently becomes laggy and impossible to play after a time, regardless of graphics setting, if it doesn't crash in the meantime. Even shutting down the game can be problematic, which it didn't do properly quite a number of times for me and required a 'Hard Reboot' to get my PC running smoothly again. As for the gameplay, it's okay(ish) if you can live with a variety of flawed combat elements. Others who have mentioned the lack of player overwatch are entirely right with their criticisms, because if the AI enemies have it, so should the player controlled characters. If the game was intentionally designed that way, as far as I'm concerned it doesn't make the game 'Hard Core', it just makes combat limited, repetitive, and hugely frustrating. Casing point is that if you enter the enemy overwatch within a few tiles, they effectively get two attack moves which invariably ends up with the player character being killed. By contrast, an enemy can practically walk right up to your character, but you have just the one attack. Essentially, they can rush you, but you can't rush them. These problematic aspects take the fun away from the interesting story, presented in different scenarios that are like chapters as the events of the protagonists unfold, with a narrator telling the story throughout. Visually the game looks decent and the music fits the general atmosphere of the game, suiting the Western theme and demonic edge to the story. If you pay full price for this game, all I can say is 'Hard Luck', because of the aforementioned issues. I was fortunate enough to get it for free during one of the GOG deals late in 2017. Had I paid 'Hard Cash' for it, I probably would have sought a refund.

Finally I got around to playing Hard West after I saw it on the AngryJoeShow years ago; I've played through the campaign and the Scars of Freedom DLC. Here's my experience with this Western tale: Good + The combat setting is excellent, and the combat world looks great graphically. + Sound and voice acting is great. + Performance is great on my dated hardware (980Ti, 32 GB DDR4, and i7 5820k) at 1440p medium settings. + The DLC's story is good and easy to follow, though weird. + GOG achievements are present. Bad - The Western tale is made weirder by the main campaign (not the Scars of Freedom DLC) being separated into scenarios; this confused the story and damaged its continuity for me. - The question/world map sections (non-combat world) are very uninteresting, and what's there to enjoy is done poorly. - It copies most of Xcom: Enemy Unknown's turn based mechanics; however, unlike Xcom there is no overwatch feature, which makes playing in the West "Hard"/frustrating sometimes, especially since you will be outnumbered most of the time by enemies who always seem to have the edge no matter your genius tactics. - There are two bugs I experienced: the first is that during some scenarios the objective refused to load, and I had to quit the game and/or restart the scenario multiple times for the objective to load; secondly, achievements would not register on my GOG profile sometimes until I restart the game, then play a section in either the main campaign or DLC. The DLC's story was more intesting and well put together than the confusion the campaign's offered. It's a weird experience that gives some great moments if you have the patience to appreciate it, despite its shortcomings.