Westerado: Double Barreled

Editor's Notes

Pre-release PC version reviewed.

Introduction

There have been games that have successfully emulated the atmosphere of the Old West—most notably of which being the 'Red Dead' series—but compared to many other video game settings, games featuring revolver wielding cowboys in dusty plains and deserts aren't in the highest supply. Thankfully, Ostrich Banditos' 'Westerado: Double Barreled' is looking to fill an indie-sized gap as a great Steam Western.

The Game Itself: Our Reviewer's Take

While I may not be the biggest fan of old Western movies, I do adore the feel of the Wild Wild West. Outlaws, vigilante justice, old-fashioned guns everywhere… in our creative minds, America's expansion to the west is far more romanticized than what it actually was, and that's just the way I like it.

Despite being the series' first commercial release, 'Westerado: Double Barreled' is actually the second game in the Westerado series; the first, simply titled 'Westerado', is a free Flash game. Actually, it's better to think of 'Double Barreled' as more of a beefed up version of the first title than a full on sequel, as the two games have a very similar setting and storyline.

In 'Westerado', you take the role of a lone gunman who is out to avenge his family. The ranch was burnt to the ground and your mother and brother killed, and he will find them and kill them, even if that means going to hell and back to do so. The problem is, he has no clue who the murderer is, other than a vague clue given to him by his brother before he died…

So, how does one go about trying to find this needle in a haystack? Many of the denizens of 'Double Barreled' have more clues about the murderer, to help narrow down the potential criminal—but they won't give this information up easily. In order for them to help you, you have to help them first. These problems can be as simple as dragging a drunken husband home, to stopping a war from breaking out. By being a (usually) do-gooder vigilante, the player will inch ever closer to the murderer's identity.

And of course, there will be lots of gunplay. With bandits roaming the wilderness and literally everyone owning a firearm, 'Westerado' is not afraid to drop the player in the middle of a firefight at the drop of a hat. However, gunplay does work a little differently from most games; in order to fire a bullet, you have to draw the weapon, ready it, and then finally fire. It's it replicate the more old-fashioned weaponry, and the mechanic works wonderfully here. Players will have to carefully aim their shots while dodging bullets, making sure not to waste the shot they've set up. Going in guns blazing takes on a bit of a different meaning here, and quite honestly it makes gunplay far more satisfying than the typical shooter offers.

That's not all you can do with a gun, however. At any point during any conversation, the avenging ranger can pull a gun on the NPC, to various effects. This could, for example, scare the person into revealing information they otherwise wouldn't have, or even make them angry and unwilling to talk. It's a neat thing to be able to do, although it admittedly gets less use than one would think… to the point that oftentimes I forgotten about the pulling the gun out option until it was too late to do so.

'Double Barreled' is also a rather open-ended experience. After the short introduction, the player can go pretty much anywhere at any time, picking up quests and exploring the wilderness of the West. It doesn't matter what order the player takes the quests in, or that even all of them get completed; instead, it's about the adventure, and the experiences that 'Westerado' has to offer. In that light, the game is an absolute delight to play. I spent a lot of my time simply roaming the wilderness in between towns, filling up my map and taking out bandits, eventually saving up enough money to buy my lady a wonderful house by the river. Not a single one of these tasks got me closer to the murderer, but I thoroughly enjoyed what I was doing, and didn't feel like I was wasting my time. Few open-ended games make me feel like that when 'going off on my own', so it's a big plus in my book that I didn't feel shoe-horned into doing certain tasks.

As an aside, I did run into a few glitches while playing 'Westerado'. Most of them were harmless, but I was unable to finish a couple of quests because the either the quest giver or a quest flag bugged out. Although, since I was playing a pre-release build, most of these bugs are expected to be ironed out by the game's official release.