WEST OF DEAD - A FLAMING SKULL IS MY HEAD

You wouldn't be UNFORGIVEN if you brought a GUN to your TOMBSTONE for THIS rodeo, COW-dash-BOY.

Do you feel lucky? I'm eatin' my lucky cigarette so I feel extra lucky.

It is the spookiest month of the spookiest year in years and I've played West of Dead for like, two hours tops, full disclosure. Set in Purgatory, which according to developers at Raw Fury is located in Wyoming, (holy crap I forgot you were a state) in a world that can only be described as Mike Mignola's Hellboy set entirely in spooky mineshaft tunnels, you play as an oddly familiar poncho-clad fusion of Clint Eastwood and Ghost Rider. He's also voiced by Ron Perlman -- okay yeah that's why he's familiar. So you're Cowboy Hellboy. I'm gonna call him HellCowBoyBoy from hereon out.

...

What?

Yeah I took a grainy cell phone picture in the dark, I'm leaning into this terrible gimmick. By the way, welcome to blog, it's called The Low Effort Laser is Charging, or LELiC. I'm your host, Ron Perlman. (AUTHOR'S NOTE: Is not actually Ron Perlman)

Someone at Raw Fury clearly really likes Mike Mignola's stuff, as its boldly colored, high-contrast graphics may as well be a Mignola comic in motion. It looks really cool and I think they should get some blessings and just go straight to the first good Hellboy game, we really need one of those and Guillermo del Toro's repeat attempts just haven't seemed to spark anything, poor guy. Anyways, whoever it is at Raw Fury, you can bet they are wearing a gleaming sheriff's badge on their sleeve, and it is a badge called INFLUENCE.

"Smokin' my pancake-flavored cigs. I miss my cats." - Hellboy, 2020

Man I wasn't even going for a 1-to-1 comparison picture to that Clint Eastwood gif up top but I sure got one! I guess Mike Mignola ALSO wore his INFLUENCE badge that day. Got you ALL! It's fine though, I also swiped these images off Google so we'll call it even; honor among thieves. We're keeping a consistent low-effort 2020 blogspot theme here if nothing else. Oh man I've barely even talked about the game.

Secret TRAYSURE!

West of Dead is like if you turned Diablo into Gears of War; you meander HellCowBoyBoy through labyrinthine connecting hallways to reach chambers in search of plunder and poppin' fools along the way. Downing foes grants Iron and Sin; that translates to Money and... Upgrade Juice, respectively.

Who am I kidding, you don't need to hear this, you've played roguelikes before, the guy who lives down the street from you who you've never spoken to has played roguelikes before, Edmund McMillen made a flash game about a poopy baby and took the world by storm and video games were never the same. Now, this new flavor of poopy baby has hit your screen, and he's a gun-toting SkeleRon Perlman.

You love him.

There's something about this game that just captivates. It's not terribly complex in any way. Its art style isn't terribly detailed, in fact environments are pretty drab, but dang they nailed that block shading, and the gameplay is a careful twin-stick shooter dance of dodging from cover to cover, sneaking about, casting set-piece lantern light into the dark corners of rooms to reveal and stun enemies, then promptly fill them with lead.

Light it up!

There's something innately satisfying about the combat loop, and you've got a decent arsenal of throwing weapons, explosives, and gun types to find the style for you. I grabbed a five-shot revolver that guaranteed a critical on every fifth shot in my most recent run. Wearing down an enemy to finish on that fifth power shot hits you right in your brain's satisfy-nodule.

Be wary though, like a Western with large quantities of dust and sand, this game is gritty (and rough, and coarse, and it gets everywhere). HellCowBoyBoy has a decent health pool, but combat doesn't ebb and flow, it jolts moment to moment from silence to frenzy; once things start getting serious, standing out of cover at the wrong moment will leave you in the middle of a flurry of bullets and drop your skeleton butt back to the purgatory bar faster than you can say "Lee Van Cleef may have been the world's only Cowboy Ninja."

I haven't had many runs where I felt my resources dwindling battle to battle, it was always a critical moment I made a wrong move and suddenly bam, run over. It plays a bit like a more methodical Hotline Miami, where in the heat of battle, you look back to find yourself only to see your body go limp as "Hit 'R' to Restart" flashes in the corner and you realize, "Oh hey I'm super dead." Death comes quick to the dead when you're... West of... Dying--forget it.

So that's West of Dead, it's a Test of Dread, you'll need Yeast for Bread, this review was Written in Bed, I feel Best when Fed. Until next time,

The Low Effort Laser is Charging...