Weird West legends meet eldritch horror in BLOOD WEST, an immersive stealth FPS. Become the Undead Gunslinger, doomed to roam the barren lands until he finds the means to purge their curse and free his soul. No, this isn’t your typical Wild West desperado redemption arc. This is a damnation arc....
Weird West legends meet eldritch horror in BLOOD WEST, an immersive stealth FPS. Become the Undead Gunslinger, doomed to roam the barren lands until he finds the means to purge their curse and free his soul. No, this isn’t your typical Wild West desperado redemption arc. This is a damnation arc.
The Canyons, the Swamp, and the Mountains. Each swarming with abominable monsters and unholy demons, these are open-ended worlds for you to explore freely at your own pace. It will take the player over 20 hours on average to complete all three scenarios, and over 35 if they want to see everything the barren lands have to offer.
Blood West is a stealth FPS inspired by the genre classics such as the Thief series (whose fans will be happy to hear the voice of Stephen Russell, the actor voicing the master-thief Garrett, returning here as the protagonist), S.T.A.L.K.E.R. games, or - from the contemporary catalog - Hunt: Showdown. The gameplay rewards the careful approach: scouting the area, stalking your enemies, and striking from the shadows. Can you figure out a way to clear a fort full of ghouls and monsters without raising an alarm?
The Barren Lands present the player with a nightmarish, twisted vision of the Wild West legends. The curse that has befallen the realm has corrupted every living thing, defiled the land itself, while summoning restless spirits and dark entities. In this mixture of gunslinger pulp and Lovecraftian horror, dark occult magick presents just as much of a threat as sudden lead poisoning.
In Blood West you will meet many colorful, yet strangely twisted, fully-voiced NPCs. Just as much prisoners of the Barren Lands as you are, they will sometimes share their unusual stories and send you on various missions. Play nice and they might reward you or become your allies. Cross them and risk their wrath.
The game won’t hold your hand. You’ll have to explore the land for yourself (buying a map from a vendor might prove useful!), and figure out your own way to approach quests. As you poke around the three expansive maps, keep an eye out for hidden places and secret stashes. There’s gold in the mountains! Fair warning - it’s probably cursed.
If sneaking around isn’t exactly your thing, or you feel that you have a power advantage over your enemies, you can always take the head-on approach and meet your enemies guns blazing. Blood West comes from the creators of the fan-favorite boomer shooter POSTAL: Brain Damaged, so much gratuitous fantasy violence and pixelated blood splatter is to be expected!
One man’s hell might be another hoarder’s paradise! From simple one-use items like bandages, through medical tinctures, explosives and incendiaries, straight to arcane artifacts that - once slotted - can change the way you play the game, the Barren Lands are just filled with STUFF. There are tons of useful items to discover, and there’s a special player’s stash crate for all those super-rare potions that you’ll hoard and never use.
A gunslinger without a gun would be just a regular slinger. Where’s the fun in that? Blood West makes sure you’ll have plenty of weapons to choose from. Revolvers, rifles, shotguns, carabines - a great variety of firearms, from standard army-issue to those infused with powerful magic, or straight-up possessed. And if you prefer not to cause a ruckus, there’s a wide selection of hand-to-hand combat weapons and archery weapons to pick your favorites from.
The RPG-like perk-based progression system in Blood West will allow you to highly customize the gameplay experience to your liking. Become a stealthy hunter, a revolver-fanning gunman or a relentless berserker. You will gain experience and progress through the skill tree, while discovering new artifacts in each of the scenarios that will bestow on you additional abilities. Combining skills and load-out creates more possible playstyles than you’d normally be able to explore in one playthrough.
Are you ready to take back the frontier from the dark forces of demonic corruption and earn the right to move on to a better world? The Barren Lands call you, Gunslinger!
I was a little iffy at first but the game quickly grew on me, it was really difficult in the beginning, I had to avoid most enemies if I couldn't get behind them or ambush them for a quick insta-kill but it was pretty fun finding ways to clear out locations
Over time you get quite a bit more powerful making it a lot easier to sweep through locations by just shooting everything in the head with your pistol or shotgun, but even if you are more powerful, getting in to open combat is such a detriment that you want avoid it at all costs and not even bother putting point skill points in to stuff that doesn't make stealth easier or mitigate the difficulty of open combat (Such as more health), stealthing is pretty easy after maybe 2 hours of playing and does get slightly more challenging in Chapter 2 (In a fun way imo) but Chapter 3 is just tanky enemy spam to the degree of point blank headshotting something with both of your Double Barrel shots from stealth and it still not dying, annoying but I didn't die a single time through out the entire game so I can't complain too much I guess
The inventory management also got pretty irritating, mostly because you get so many items and weapons that just aren't super useful, and the ones that are useful are locked behind a huge price tag from a trader so you have to carry that stuff back with you to sell if you want to good stuff, and not to mention that your stash is also limited in space so you can't just hold on to much stuff to try later, you have to sell it or use it, you do get bags you can keep in your inventory for extra space but most of that ended up being taken up by ammo with how many different types there are that don't stack
The game isn't super nuanced but blowing creatures heads off from the shadows is satisfying and the useful items and weapons that are there, are pretty fun to use and *can* be a big upgrade over what you had previously IF they don't have some awful debuff to go with it
I went into this expecting a fast-paced boomer-shooter with a weird west theme, something like Dusk or Blood. I was somewhat pleasantly surprised to find myself with a slower-paced, almost Thief-like FPS-RPG.
Dropped into a medium sized map and allowed to crack on, you explore the gloomy world, rendered in a pleasing (if somewhat dark) low-resolution style. A fairly low draw distance is a slight hinderance, but the art style is well done, and the small touches to the environment are appealing.
The gameplay loop is, for lack of a better term, inspired by 'souls-likes', where death sends you back to a checkpoint and respawns some enemies. You are given a task early on to defeat the region boss and can pick up a limited amount of simple side tasks, usually involving reaching a certain point on the map or retrieving an item.
A good amount of weapons and items are available, allowing you to tailor a playstyle in conjunction with the RPG skill mechanics, though some of the skills do seem like a waste of points and the build that seems most successful is the "stealth-archer" style of picking enemies off with your melee until you're discovered, then guns blazing to finish the stragglers.
Combat is punishing, without a dedicated dodge or block function, and enemies hit hard up close, though ranged enemies projectiles travel slow enough to be seen and dodged with a little lateral movement.
The combat rewards methodical planning and accuracy, and is satisfying when you manage to blow up a group of enemies with a dynamite stick and then rush in to crush the survivors with your magic axe.
The weapons are rendered nicely and have satisfying feedback and reload animations. Consumables are fully animated and thus require a little tactics as to when to use them.
Story is vague but serviceable, you're mostly here for the atmosphere, art style and methodical gameplay.
Overall, this was a pleasant surprise and a fun little adventure in the Weird West. Recommended.
Blood West is excellent. Instabuy if you love 90's masterpieces as Thief series and System Shock series.
I think that you will recognize the Undead's voice :P
It would be wrong to say that this comes close to its inspirations, but it does for a satisfying gameplay loop if you want more wild west + monsters out to get you. It's pretty good, but on the other hand - Weird West exists.
Pretty fun tbh, the stealth system is really good, I love the exploration, inventory managment isn't too bad but could be better.
I got my copy for free so its much easier to recommend but if I had gotten on sale would highly still recommend.
