Cowboys and werewolves? Now that’s weird: PETER HOSKIN reviews Weird West
Weird West
Rating: 
Howdy, stranger. If you’re anything like me, I suppose you’ve been excited about the release of Weird West, seeing as it’s by some of the people behind the modern-day classics Prey and Dishonored. But maybe you’ve been a little trepidatious, too. In these ignoble times, so many games chuck in a few tentacles and H.P. Lovecraft references and call themselves ‘weird’ that it can come across as… lazy.
Well, thankfully, Weird West is anything but lazy. This is one of the most meticulous games ever to be set in America’s gun-slingin’, posse-formin’ past — up there with 2018’s Red Dead Redemption 2.
Care is evident in everything from its distinctive hand-drawn look to its basic gameplay. Weird West is, like Prey and Dishonored, an ‘immersive sim’, in which practically everything can be manipulated to spell a mess of trouble for your enemies.
But unlike most other immersive sims, Weird West isn’t played from a first-person perspective.
Weird West is one of the most meticulous games ever to be set in America’s gun-slingin’, posse-formin’ past
In look and feel, it shares much with old, top-down, role-playing games such as Baldur’s Gate. You’re moving your little people through an expansive story.
And this is where the weirdness comes in. Your people include a werewolf and even a pigman non grata. Their adventures are interrupted by bears and firestorms. They will meet hundreds of enigmatic, well-written characters. Far from being lazily weird, this is cleverly, defiantly, genuinely weird.
The weirdest thing of all? In mixing together everything from Red Dead to Fallout, Weird West makes its own, delicious form of bean stew. Eat up. The trail ahead is long and strange.
- On PlayStation, Xbox, PC, £32.99 or free with Xbox Game Pass.
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