Review for West of Dead. Game for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 18/06/2020 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 05/08/2020 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 05/08/2020
Attempts to reinvigorate and revive the roguelike genre follow one another cyclically and with mixed success. Raw Fury somehow resumes the trail of a title of the genre that has been very successful, the Dead Cells also added this month on PsNow, turning to a western-noir setting. The title for PS4 is a port of the version already published on PC a few months ago, and given the game's twin-stick shooter setup, the conversion should only have brought benefits. It would have.
The scenery
West of Dead is an isometric shooter which allows you to handle and fire 2 weapons at a time. The player plays the role of William Mason (whose narrative voice is of Hollywood star Ron Perlman - ed), a damned soul sent to Purgatory about whom we know little and we will try to discover something more as we advance in history, although he is not the case to expect who knows what narration. Your job, as you may have guessed, is to get out of Purgatory in an attempt to find out who sent you there and why. The setting of West of Dead connects perfectly with the roguelike game-design used, as each death will simply take you back to a sort of ethereal saloon in front of the door that will open on your suffering. Often looking at redemption as a chimera.
The darkness in this title of Upstream Arcade it is an integral part of the experience, both in terms of script and strategy, it is not by chance that the lanterns are a fundamental part of all progress. This helps to make a widespread sense of anguish better, but above all to enhance the type of graphics cel-shaded chosen by the development team, which recalls a lot of the atmosphere à la Sin City. On balance, this is probably the most appropriate and successful aspect of the game.
The lights of gameplay
The fundamentals of shooting and coverage mechanics are managed almost completely automatically. Mason, with his skull on fire, will naturally "stick" to any cover element he is (very) close to. Getting into coverage, however, is only the beginning, not least because none of them are permanent. This means that you will not be able to stay in the same spot indefinitely and therefore you will have to immediately think about how and when to get out of it, perhaps with a somersault or with all the volume of fire you are capable of. When it comes to shooting, West of Dead does not offer aiming aid mechanisms, but it forces you to rely only on your experience and on some direction indicators near your avatar. By pressing and holding the L2 or R2 trigger, depending on the gun you want to use, you will be able to aim and / or shoot directly, single shot or burst. Not negligible detail: there are no bullet counters, so you don't have to worry about looking for ammunition or reloading the guns, as the reload operation is automatic and the speed can be increased through skill improvements. With each kill and progressing in the exploration of the map they are earned iron and 'sin' points, expendable for the necessary upgrades by merchants who meet on the way, or by the sorceress who is at the end of each level.
Each weapon has its own damage index, optimal range and reload times, and this obviously affects the player's approach to combat. Furthermore, in perfect rougelike style, the map always changes randomly at each run and the same goes for the placement of weapons and gadgets (not many to tell the truth). In addition to the use of firearms, players can in fact take advantage of a series of additional combat tools, no more than two at the same time. Explosives, smoke bombs, Molotov cocktails and lanterns, as well as a protective shield. La light is an element key in the fight against the eternal inhabitants of Purgatory. Bursts of light around an enemy, lighting a lamp or throwing a lantern, will cause him to remain stunned, allowing you to deal extra damage.
Le ombre of gameplay
Whether you are dealing with sharpshooters, giant swamp hunters, plagued swollen, mutant dogs, humanoid dragons or hideous infernal bats, the selection of villains with which you will come across in West of Dead will always be decidedly stimulating and above all anxious. Not just for the ancestral sense of darkness. As we have already said, the rougelike setting of the title provides that it is not possible to advance through checkpoints or save the game in a point where to resume it (it is only allowed to suspend it). Each death is final and mercilessly sends you back to square one for all the good things you had done up to then. This, if on the one hand it forces you to make conscious choices in increasing some skills (first of all health), on the other it makes you dramatically helpless when, overwhelmed at the first attempt of a bossfight never experienced before, you will be sent back to the crypt (various chapters earlier). It is the rougelike beauty. Some skill enhancements will still remain unlocked (such as the health recovery potion), but that won't help mitigate the frustration of being forced into a new full walkthrough.
However, the painful notes are not limited to the overly purist interpretation of the genre (which could also be mitigated in many ways). From what was touched by hand for the review of the PS4 version of West of Dead, the major flaw in our opinion of this production - interesting albeit sparse - lies in the way in which the gamer is forced to manage the field of view. Forget the classic third person view that allows you to control the room to taste to manage your approach to the map and shooting sectors in battles. West of Dead imposes on the player a view that can be changed very little and above all that is not linked to the progress of the character towards a specific point. To be clear, it is almost never possible engage in a firefight having the view from behind the your character. Given the isometric setting of the levels, to approach certain enemies you will have only one possible direction of movement and / or shooting. More frustrating (and in some cases harmful), we often find ourselves firing at a point only thinking about the probable presence of an enemy, since even if acting on the right lever that controls the view a portion of the map remains invisible. In the long run, these blind adaptations become tiring.
Un porting that tastes like beta
Having said the obvious flaws in the management of the camera and the extremism in the rougelike concepts applied by Raw Fury, one cannot fail to note that the game also has some serious deficiencies in routine and level design. The bugs encountered in the test were various and forced us to restart as many (imagine what it means, for a game where you always start over, having to do it even when you didn't deserve it). Beyond the graceful and successful comic design there is nothing more in the map, which is randomly generated, but it is really too essential. The maze of corridors and rooms that forms is repetitive and disconsolately empty, while the dark / light effects can be boring in the long run. The porting to the console, which also could have performed well in a twin stick shooter, is minimal, if not for a targeting functionality linked to the controller touchpad which soon turns out to be inaccurate and unusable.
A Purge AI… thorium
Enemy AI is cumbersome and at times embarrassing: stuff from other times, it seems. The imbalance ranges from the perfect imbecility of some semi-static soldiers to the fury of lethal animals that can chase you for a long time. Not to mention the bossfights. Each of these is almost safe to find yourself starting from scratch, no matter how well equipped and prepared you were, sometimes death seems inevitable. If we add that the tutorial is much, much less than essential, and the customization of the commands does not exist, we could well say that the title is ready… for a beta version!
In essence, what emerges in this review of the West of Dead version of the PlayStation 4 is also a regret. With the bowls stopped, one wonders why to rush to consume an intriguing idea just to publish the title first. Obviously we do not know the commercial dynamics behind it, but we are sure that in the current situation West of Dead was a nice embryonic project that the guys from Raw Fury probably burned, inevitably destining it to stay…. in Purgatory. Too bad because the atmosphere was promising, and the porting to the console could have granted the playability that instead represents the real minus of this production.
► West of Dead is a Shooter-Adventure type game published by Raw Fury for PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One and Nintendo Switch, the video game was released on 18/06/2020 The version for Nintendo Switch came out on 05/08/2020 The version for PlayStation 4 came out on 05/08/2020
