Recent reviews by Frempt

The story and characters are significantly better than you'd expect of a 2010s cover shooter - it tells a genuinely good story packed full of humour and twists

The gameplay is very janky, but also has a fun energy to it that kept it mostly enjoyable for the ~10 hours it took me to play the campaign

If you want some quick, punchy sci-fi fun, you can definitely do worse than this

Lacking a bit in the UX department, but a very fun gameplay loop. Really enjoyable to plan a route round the map and deal with the chaos that ensues from trying to load/offload cargo without the coast guard catching up to you

Visuals and music are very charming, and controlling the ship is fun. There are fast currents, whirlpools, and other boats that you need to avoid or exploit, which adds a bit of depth to traversal (but it's still simple fun)

Unfortunately there are no keyboard shortcuts and the UI is quite basic, which can dampen the experience a bit. There's also not much in the way of tutorial, so you need to work out most of the mechanics yourself

One of the most satisfying gaming experiences I've ever had. If you want to play a game that tests your deductive reasoning skills this is absolutely for you.

TL;DR - a good but not great action game, with weak RPG and immersive sim mechanics and excellent presentation. I'd recommend if it's on sale

I feel like Wolfeye shot themselves in the foot by declaring this as "from the co-creators of Dishonored and Prey" - those are two of my favourite games of all time, so my expectations were immediately high and while Weird West is good, it falls short of the heights of those two games. I found myself drawing (probably unfair) comparisons to Arkane's games throughout, and the budget is clearly a lot smaller in Weird West.

Some pros and cons, and general points -

--PROS--

Presentation is excellent, with all assets conforming to a very striking style. It would be difficult to look at a screenshot of Weird West and confuse it with another game. The audio is similarly very distinct and well produced, with some really satisfying musical cues throughout.

The world is really cool - intriguing, dark, and irreverent all at once. I didn't exactly study the lore books found throughout the game but did find myself genuinely interested in world building elements not relevant to the main story.

The meta-narrative is quite fun and has me interested in playing through again to see how differently things can turn out.

There is a fun "Friends for Life" feature, where if you help an NPC out they will sometimes appear to help you in a fight, which led to some really cool (unscripted) cinematic moments.

Combat is unforgiving, you need to plan ahead or you will die very quickly. Often stealth takedowns are the best approach, but when it's not an option you need to be prepared for a showdown.

--CONS--

The RPG mechanics, specifically the weapon upgrade system and the perks/ability unlocks, are shallow and not impactful. Weapons only have ~4 quality tiers and very little variety, so you can very quickly reach an "endgame" gun and use it indefinitely. Some of the abilities were useful, but the majority of them were not worth bothering with when you can spend the same resources on a bullet time jump, Max Payne style. The perks were just boring flat bonuses, with little more interesting than a % bonus to health or increased jumping height.

For an immersive sim, it lacks options. The best you can usually hope for is to find a shortcut that skips part of a level. This makes it feel like there's a lack of freedom, which isn't great for this type of game.

Related to the previous point, the level design is quite bland. Nothing is technically broken, it just seems mostly like a sequence of rooms/buildings linked by corridors/pathways. Even the most interesting level turns out to be quite linear, it's just a less predictable path.

The UI could be better designed, and the quest journal is just a list of objectives without context. There is also no local area map aside from the minimap - so you have no way to remind yourself what the layout of your immediate area is without wandering around.

Exploration rarely goes anywhere - you discover many locations while travelling The West but if you visit there's nothing to do unless you have a quest to go there already.

--GENERAL POINTS--

The side content has some fun moments, but doesn't feel work the effort mostly (the rewards are quite meagre)

You play five connected short stories as five different characters, each from a different faction. It ties together quite nicely but takes some getting used to.

Dialogue is unvoiced, but there's not much of it so I wouldn't worry about having too much reading to do. There is a voiced narrator with a suitably Texan accent

After only one playthrough, it's hard to say how dynamic the world is - it claims to be a bespoke experience each time

A must-buy for fans of action movies, bird puns, Oddworld, and electronic rock.

I'm pretty sure that button just caused that pyramid to turn into a 100 foot high demon.

The only reason I'm playing this and not God of War is that this has a PC version.

Okay, that is actually a lot of guns.

Very interesting game, although the combat gets a little stale as it goes on. I felt it should have had greater emphisis on puzzles to match it's intelligent storyline. If you're looking for a great story and some cool, action oriented gameplay, this is a good stop.

As a professional ninja, I can vouch for the fact that this game captures the art of Ninjality very well.