Dark West Review: The Legend of the Dark West Filled with Thunder and Plasma

After the Civil War, the American West, vampire parasites, steampunk style equipment, electric currents and smoke filled the air, accompanied by amputations and plasma splatters... If anyone packed these classic elements into the same game, then the game could easily gain a large number of fans before release, who would shout "the romance of men" and climax in the comment section of each broadcast and demonstration.

"Dark West" is such a work. And since I watched the first promotional video of this game in December last year, I have been looking forward to becoming one of the players of Western Fantasy.

The overall performance of Dark West continues the standard level of developer Flying Wild Hog - you see, their average score for a bunch of second tier games is no less than 60, the highest is no more than 80, and this time is no exception. However, this work also has a unique temperament, just like the developers' Shadow Warriors and The Road to the underworld, which particularly fascinates me.

Exciting high-intensity battles

When it comes to the West, many people may first think of revolvers. But in fact, Dark West is a third person action game with an off the shoulder perspective, and we can clearly see some shadows from the last two God of War games from this game.

The most important output weapon in Dark West is the electric hand guard worn by the protagonist, which has an excellent sense of impact, and each punch's feedback is full of power. And the various moves in this game do not require any rubbing moves, so it is easy to get started. In addition to ordinary attack actions such as Ping A and Ascending Dragon Fist, players can also quickly approach enemies or pull them to their side through hand guards to quickly create a combo. This wild combat style of swinging an iron fist and opening and closing, with sparks and lightning all the way, leaving only blood and limbs on the ground, is very refreshing.

As for various long-range weapons, although this game provides pistols, rifles, shotguns, flamethrowers, crossbows, and even Blue Fire Gatling, their effects are actually more similar to those used for maintaining combos, long-range counterattacks, explosive clearing, and applying vulnerable skills.

Dark West adopts a linear level design, with a total of 16 levels completed and each level's content is to level one battle point and then run to the next one. Between each battle point, the game arranges mild puzzle solving and exploration content as a mediator. Although the puzzle solving and exploration in this game are not done well, and there is even suspicion of dragging time, the coins and skill points obtained during the process are actually good things. Because most of the skill trees in the game are new moves and there is almost no such useless design as "XX damage increases by X%", players can continuously expand their combat methods and become more brave as they upgrade.

The combat intensity of this game is not low. On the one hand, even in normal difficulty, the enemy's damage is still very high, making it easy to take away the protagonist's set; On the other hand, in the later stages of battles in the game, in addition to the combination of long-range and close enemies, there are often situations where miscellaneous soldiers, high health elite monsters, and elite monsters that require special coping mechanisms appear together in piles. Therefore, players need to quickly make tactical plans, while dealing with enemies and creating short-term one-on-one combat opportunities through props and skills, to clear the field as soon as possible and avoid being besieged.

In addition, the most efficient way to restore life and energy in "Dark West" is to execute enemies, which prompts players to not shrink even if they are at a disadvantage, but to find opportunities to counterattack and win in danger. After familiarizing myself with the battle strategy, this sense of determination that "without fighting, one cannot survive" immersed me in the pursuit of demon hunting, and I couldn't stop at all.

However, there are also some aspects of this work that I am dissatisfied with. Firstly, the over the shoulder perspective results in a smaller field of view, and the enemies outside the screen are not at all lenient, so I often get instantly hit with blood. On the other hand, there are too few types of enemies in the game, so it often happens that the front foot is still a boss and the back foot is a mass-produced elite monster - this has also led to some later levels where five or six elite monsters and a dozen or so small monsters are thrown in the player's face, making the fight annoying.

A clich é d Western story

It seems that after Redemption of the Wild 2, Western America has once again become a hot topic in game design. As a Western film enthusiast, I largely played with the background setting and story of Dark West.

Unfortunately, the "West" in this game is just a possible but unnecessary background board, just like the "East" element in Shadow Warrior that doesn't matter.

Taking inspiration from Western movies, retro science fiction, and bioterrorism, Dark West has created a unique and surprising aesthetic. The levels of this game cover a lot of iconic traditional Western style content, including small churches in dense forests and poisonous swamps, abandoned laboratories on snow capped mountains, bridge bombing and train robbery, and independent exploration of bank vaults. And these scenes are often packaged with terrifying elements, such as players discovering huge inverted pyramids emitting eerie red light underground after delving deep into mines, or seemingly calm oil fields and train stations filled with terrifying leeches and spiders.

The protagonist's divine attire, shining with blue lightning, goes without saying that when antique revolvers and lever guns blend with earthy artificial lightning in the tide, the only adjective I can think of is "sexy". In the absence of a sequel to The Order 1886, there aren't many games that can show me both electromagnetic weapons and giant Zeppelin airships, while allowing me to personally hunt down retro supernatural creatures.

But compared to visual performance, the story and characters in Dark West are just too boring. The story of this work is not very deep and full of loopholes. I basically read the beginning and guessed the end, and I am not interested in watching it again.

The characters in the game are all very boring. The protagonist Jesse is a standard facial makeup cowboy, belonging to the kind of people who shoot first and then use their brains, wish to break their pen and press their fingerprints when filling out documents, and say awkward witty words like "welcome to America" after killing enemies. Supporting role, like seniors who are both teachers and friends, corrupt and incompetent officials, and villains who advocate evolution, will only shout and abuse each other with conventional lines in the cut scenes, which makes people bored.

Overall, in a sense, it can be said that Flying Wild Hog wants to replicate the style of classic American westerns. However, their techniques are too rigid and clumsy, and the character setting and plot direction of old movies are not enough to satisfy today's players.

epilogue

As mentioned at the beginning of this article, "Dark West" is a product of Flying Wild Hog's normal performance - a game that hovers between 70 and 75 points, a game that looks sensational but plays somewhat mediocre. But one of the characteristics of this production team is that when they once again pile up various seemingly unrelated aesthetic elements in a wild and playful way to create a cult style 2A game, I still can't suppress my interest and expectations.

If you want to play a well crafted dark style Western Monster Hunter, then Dark West is far from satisfying you. But if just seeing a tough cowboy tearing monsters with black technology can already make you happy, then this retro action adventure game would be a good choice.