West of Dead is an unsettling title. It almost angers for the incredible opportunity held by the developers who seem to have been the first to not believe it enough. West of Dead it is stuffed with an excellent incipit and a good dose of simple and well contextualized mechanics, a sturdy skeleton on which to take practicality with the commands hopefully in direct evolution, but nothing. After the first levels and understand the structure of them, the game puts the autopilot together with a formula of extreme repetitiveness in building the whole subsequent path that leads to the credits, interspersing the road with some bosses. The initial enthusiasm, the living flame of passion is therefore violently extinguished shortly after by a bucket of cold water, bringing us down to earth: this skeleton has no flab, it is robust in the bones, but the substance does not change. But let's talk about another skeleton, our ardent protagonist.
Pop imagery
The Old West setting has made the fortune of media such as cinema, with the genre laying the foundations for many adventure and thriller films we know today. We also had the opportunity to imagine desolate lands by immersing ourselves in the reading of great classics, with Cormac McCarthy who is still there to show us the way in the structure and narration of the desolating silence of lands wet by the blood of guns, cowboys, arrows and American Indians. . In this conglomeration of cases, the video game cannot be missing that, although it always prefers world builing focused on science fiction or fantasy, every now and then it gives itself the luxury of taking us to the Old West, and mammoth titles such as Red Dead Redemption immediately spring to mind.
In this reality, West of Dead seeks to combine two distinct genres: the fantastic with the historical. These two come to life in the very story of the game. After death there is no Paradise and not even the elusive Nothing, but a dimension that recalls all the stylistic features of the Old West, from infamous saloons and tired-looking bartenders, to shady characters and merchants ready to tap our currency in this otherworldly world. Our hero with the burning skull, William Mason, will investigate his demise with gunshots, grenades and rifles.
Six shots and lots of luck
The title comes with a game formula not unlike a simplistic roguelite. What is certain is that behind this derivation there is the excellent visual sector to compensate. The characters are modeled with great care and all settings live in a pulsating darkness that will be illuminated by our glowing skull. The map, built in the corridor, will present multiple directions to explore, so as to find bonus weapons, items, momentary boosts or specific vendors.
Getting to the end of the level won't be easy, as each "room" will have enemies. Facing them face-to-face is madness, in fact we will be an easy target and we will perish - even in this dimension - after a handful of shots. This is where an automatic cover system comes into play. In each room there will be columns or crates on the ground, all of which are destructible. It will be enough for us to get closer and our William will perform an automatic cover action.
Being a twin stick shooter (the use of a joypad is therefore highly recommended), aiming from behind cover will be very easy, also thanks to a crescent at our feet that will show us the direction that the shot will take as soon as we leave the stick. Each weapon benefits from a certain number of hits. Stopping firing will automatically reload our magazine, ready to use and poured into other enemies.
There will be throwing weapons among old hatchets, knives or even small grenades.
In the middle of the journey of our life
Now the pains begin. After having appreciated the whole sector of functional mechanics and certainly an interesting artistic direction, the game ceases to exist. For convenience and without using misleading metaphors: all levels are made up of these elements, corridors, room full of enemies, other corridors and other rooms (with extreme recycling of assets). Every now and then the boss or the vendor on duty runs away, but the extreme repetitiveness too tedious, extends beyond belief a game that already after a handful of hours, stops impressing and can no longer convey the good points in favor.
West of Dead therefore remains an excellent idea well concretized, but when a deeper exploration of each organ that is called into question is asked, it stops working, masked behind a continuous recycling of assets as regards the settings and the content structure itself, from the level of challenge proposed, up to the game objects (such as interchangeable weapons - and each with its own intrinsic potential - which in front of a plethora of enemies all the same, the possibility is lacking to act as the most versatile weapons for the type of player we are). Whatever the weapon we hold and the enemy in front of us, a couple of hits and it will perish, a bit like our enthusiasm that has been extinguished level after level.
