Get your XCOM fix this year with the brutal Hard West

Cowboys and strategy

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With XCOM 2 just pushed back into 2016 and, I assume, everyone needing a short break from 1,000 hours of Invisible, Inc, strategy-minded folks seem to have a good option this fall: Hard West.

The Western turn-based strategy game cites XCOM, David Lynch, Stephen King, No Country For Old Men as influences, while I’m noticing some High Plains Drifter in its horror side, but it isn’t just a carbon copy with a new theme.

Hard West is split into two levels. The over world is represented as a map with various points of interest. While you typically have an objective and a place you could go right away to advance the story (typical Western tale of hunting in revenge), you can also explore bits in the map, engage in some light text adventuring, and set yourself up for the turn-based strategy (combat) sections.

At one point in my demo I had to rescue a man held on a cannibal farm because I needed information from him. An elixir vendor further south, when pressed about the cannibalism (information gleaned from earlier adventure), admitted some of that crew come into his shop to buy spices and things. He offered to vouch for me if I drank one of his elixirs. I did, and it was poison, which weakened me a bit.

But I was also able to take that poison to a well near the farm and poison their water supply, thus weakening all my upcoming enemy combatants. Plus, with the snake oil salesman’s help, I was able to stealth my way through my turns and to the hostage’s shack. With my cover, enemies would get suspicious if I got too close for too long, but I was able to get through fairly easily. After the rescue, that upped our ranks to three, leaving me even better off for the impending slaughter. (An optional objective was to try the human meat, which would restore strength, but it could’ve had some drawbacks; I opted to avoid it).

There are a number of cool options available within the tactical half. Like XCOM, you have to reload, sometimes after just one shot, because of the period guns. You can also hold up an enemy if you don’t want to kill them (or don’t want to kill them yet). There’s also no overwatch phase, so if you know where an enemy is and they aren’t expecting you, you can run up on them and unload.

Hard West also challenges the random number generator. You can permanently lose characters (as I did, last minute, with my would-be informant); the game is not easy. But it tries to reward you for playing well, which all comes down to positioning. Accordingly, you don’t have those point blank, 98% chance shots that somehow always miss when you need them most. If you get close enough, you were playing well, and you’re rewarded with sure hits. Which is important when both you and your enemies can go down in one or two hits.

There are plenty of other wrinkles in Hard West I’d like to explore. There is full/half cover, but you can also make your own cover by, say, flipping over a table in the middle of a room. There are also challenging richochet shots, which I didn’t try out, and each gun has secondary fire (a spread cone for the shotgun, fanning for multiple pistol shots). Playing card modifiers also enhance your characters — by greater degrees if you also make a poker hand. And I didn’t get to the early promised bit about dynamic sunlight casting shadows that can alert you to enemy positions (and vice-versa).

Hard West is coming to PC this fall.


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