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Some thoughts on Hard West

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Weblinks: Official Website, Steam, GOG.com

It is amazing that there are so few Western video games. The genre dominated the launch of almost every other medium; Gunsmoke remains the longest running American prime-time drama to this day, starting out on radio before eventually making the move to television. With its violent themes and iconic imagery the genre would have appeared a shoo-in to appeal to the next generation of trigger happy gamers. Instead the industry became dominated by sword and sorcery and science fiction.

Perhaps this has more to do with the shift in perception away from Westerns in the popular culture than it does with video games themselves, not that they have ever been known to shy away from controversy. Still, even a game like Hard West that wears its inspirations on its sleeve still feels the need to hide some of its more archaic aspects by staying within the Weird West sub-genre. What follows is a twisting multifaceted tale of demonic intrigue with no real discernible heroes or villains.

Developed by Polish based CreativeForge Games and funded through Kickstarter, Hard West is a turn-based tactical game that takes heavy inspiration from titles such as Jagged Alliance and X-COM. Having just finished the Shadowrun series, I figured I was ready to try my hand at a little strategic gunslinging. Hard West took great pleasure in proving me wrong. If it were a horse I would say that it tried to buck me at every possible opportunity. It almost succeeded too.

Hard West is not an approachable game. It does have a tutorial of sorts, and its mechanics are not all that complicated, but it demands a level of confidence that is hard to come by when you are dying so much. In the end the only way I could progress was by enabling some helpful gameplay mods such as turning off enemy reaction shots until I got my skills up. Combat is fluid, forcing you to aggressively move between cover to outflank enemies rather than staying out of harm's way.

When it works it works, and it can be really satisfying to enter a battle where you are outgunned two to one and still come out with your posse intact. The game’s stealth missions are also quite gratifying, although I do wish I could just assign a character to subdue someone rather than having to keep reminding them. The whole interface is not as streamlined as it could be, and it took me a while to master what should be basic tasks, such as utilizing hotkeys or navigating equipment screens.

 

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By far the greatest weakness of Hard West though is how unstable it is. It takes a lot of cheek for the game to employ a hard nosed save system when it often crashes right before saving your progress at the end of a combat mission. At least it did have the good grace of core dumping mostly on the missions I was having fun with and would not mind playing again, as you almost always do a better job the second time. You can also quit the game during the overworld without consequence.

These sections serve as interactive interludes between combat missions, having you navigate a game piece across a map to various locations in order to acquire items and complete quests. It actually reminded me of The Oregon Trail at times, if only because of the abundance of dialogues telling me that something horrible has happened to someone in my posse. Each has a unique gimmick on offer that modifies the core gameplay, but even then these segments can get tedious at times.

Hard West lives or dies on how charismatic its main characters are and how interesting their circumstance is, and not all of them are created equal. I had the most fun playing as Warren in the "As Good as Dead" scenario and Cassandra in "A Matter of Time", each of which had the most flavour in terms of both the combat missions and the overworld. Linking them all together is Dave DeAndrea's narration as Death, admirably setting the mood alongside Marcin Przybyłowicz's excellent soundtrack.

A DLC entitled Scars of Freedom was put out a few months after the game's release, offering one lengthy new scenario and two new voiced leads in the form of escaped slave Libertee and the mad surgeon Doctor Gorman. It holds most of the same faults and qualities as the original game, although a lot of the spoken dialogue does seem oddly clipped, with the actress for Libertee in particular often seeming to spit out her lines rather than speaking them.

Hard West is a hard game to recommend to anyone unwilling to subject themselves to a trial by fire. While it can satisfy once you get a taste for it, not all of the obstacles it places in your path are reasonable, especially when it trips over its own feet in terms of technical execution or with the sparseness of some of its scenarios. Still I am glad that I saw it through to the end, and can even see myself returning to it if I ever want to try my hand again at a little strategic gunslinging.

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
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About the author -
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Hamish Paul Wilson is a free software developer, game critic, amateur writer, cattle rancher, shepherd, and beekeeper living in rural Alberta, Canada. He is an advocate of both DRM free native Linux gaming and the free software movement alongside his other causes, and further information can be found at his icculus.org homepage where he lists everything he is currently involved in: http://icculus.org/~hamish
See more from me
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17 comments
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lucifertdark Mar 18, 2017
Quoting: Hamish
Quoting: lucifertdarkAnyone remember the game Mad Dog McCree?
I can't say that I remember it, but apparently my brother found a copy of it while thrifting:
That's the one, the acting was so bad it was funny, but I kept going back to try beating it time after time, never did get all the way through.
Nanobang Mar 18, 2017
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Quoting: Hamish"I'm sure that play style matters in this case ..."

I've had such a varied reaction to the turn-based rpg games I've played that I wonder if what Hamish said couldn't be applied to the genre as a whole. I never finished Shadowrun Returns, only barely started Jagged Alliance: Flashback, and never-finished-but-started-four-times Divinity: Original Sin.

I bought and tried Shadowrun and JAF at about the same time and my soporific experience convinced me that turn-based games and I just didn't have enough common interests for our relationship to have any real future.

Divinity: Original Sin changed all that though. In fact I was enjoying myself so much that I thought "Clearly I've been too narrow minded about TBRPGs, maybe it's time to get back up on that horse and ride again." So I bought Hard West, but I've yet to try it. (I'm still a bit burnt out from my four unfinished Divinity not-really-play-throughs.)

I can't really tell from what I've read here whether I'll enjoy my time with Hard West. This has nothing to do with shortcomings of Hamish's review, which was excellent. In fact it was Hamish's excellence that made it so difficult to tell if I'll enjoy Hard West. All the things he mentions --- high difficulty curve, learning-by-dying, capricious saving, and wholly unreliable stability --- are all things that have driven me from some games, yet challenged me to persevere in others. Time will, as they say, tell.

P.S. Apropos of nothing other than not wanting to miss out on the recommend-a-Western-video-game game, I'll mention the rootin' tootin' twin-stick shootin' gun-toting gobbet-fest: 12 is Better than 6. While not a TBRPG, it was one of those games that challenged me to persevere, and I highly recommend. (Quite coincidentally, it's currently on sale at 75% off.)

Bang! Bang! Ka-Pow!


Last edited by Nanobang on 18 March 2017 at 3:43 pm UTC
Hamish Mar 18, 2017
Quoting: NanobangIn fact it was Hamish's excellence that made it so difficult
Yeah, it can be such a burden. I think I will try being mediocre now instead. ;)

Cheers though.
AlveKatt Mar 19, 2017
Gunsmoke was clever in a way. It was a twin stick shooter before there were twin stick joypads. It was a vertical scroller with a cowboy instead of a space ship, and you moved the character with the cross and I think you fired your guns with both A and B. A shot left, B shot right, and both of them together shot straight forward.
tuubi Mar 19, 2017
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Don't forget good old High Noon on the C-64. I loved the music, and the way the undertaker calmly drags downed outlaws into his establishment by their legs. And then there's Outlaws, starring the riding sheriff with the chin. Not to be confused with Outlaw the top-down shooter which I never played.


Last edited by tuubi on 19 March 2017 at 3:41 pm UTC
descender Apr 25, 2017
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Quoting: HamishI am sure that play style matters in this case - in Shadowrun I would fortify myself and lob grenades and the like from a safe vantage while in Hard West you have to keep moving and get as close to an enemy as possible before you can get a hit, which is often difficult due to the enemy reaction shots. You have to be a lot more aggressive and confident, not least because the luck system also favours the bold by penalizing you for missed shots while rewarding you for being fired upon.

I should also point out that I have never actually played X-COM.

Yeah I play very aggressively in all three games.

While Hard West has reaction shots, hit calculations are completely deterministic. By looking at the luck counters, I can estimate to a good degree of accuracy how much health each side will lose for a particular string of movements. This allows me to decide when to trade luck/health for a superior position and/or damage without fear of RNG failures. (Trading off one strategic/tactical resource for another is something I learn in chess e.g. material for initiative or position). My overall strategy is to close in and/or flank for crossfire and maximum damage. Mobility is key in this approach so my characters are equipped with weapons and cards that confer luck and movement.

For X-COM, I have 1 or 2 snipers to bleed or pin down enemy units while assault soldiers armed with shotguns close in for flanking or for reconnaissance in exposed areas. Ditto for Shadowrun where I have a fast-moving melee character buffed by magic and backed up by sniper fire.


Last edited by descender on 25 April 2017 at 4:09 pm UTC
Hamish Jun 19, 2017
Son of a Gun, they added quicksave:
https://playingtux.com/articles/hard-west-patch-15-new-quicksave-function-released

Guess I should have waited a few more months to play, huh?


Last edited by Hamish on 19 June 2017 at 6:18 am UTC
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