Westerado

Westerado: Double Barreled is spaghetti western whodunit where you can kill anyone, at any time

Make my Day

By Mark Brown

It's always there. Tempting you. Making you ask "what if…". I'm talking about the option to draw your gun, which sits in the corner of every conversation in Westerados: Double Barreled.

This is a loopy spaghetti western game where your gun does most of the talking. You can draw (and, separately, cock) your weapon during a conversation to get the upper hand. And you can shoot anyone, at any time.

And I mean anyone - including your uncle who starts you off on your adventure, and including people who give you quests. The game just keeps going, bending itself to fit around your anarchic, murderous ways.

I failed a quest because I killed a hat salesman (hey, I needed a hat!), couldn't safely return to the main town because I robbed a bank (hey, I needed money!), and killed both Indians and the cavalry in a blood-soaked standoff.

Your goal is to track down a killer. Some bad dude murdered your family and burned down your farm, and each quest you complete gives you one more scrap of info about the killer's identity. Once you think you've found your man, you can confront him. Or shoot him.

The combat is terrifically fast and frenetic. You, and your opponents (be they outlaws or the bank manager protecting his vault), can only shoot horizontally so you have to carefully line yourself up on the Y-axis before pulling the trigger.

You also have to cock the gun between each shot, and reload bullets individually - which seems simple in peace time, but turns into a jumbled mess of button presses during a showdown.

Oh, and don't forget the brilliant health system that's based on your hat getting shot off. To recover health you'll need to carefully take off a rival's hat with an accurate headshot then go pick up their Stetson.

Double Barreled, then, isn't a crunchy little Western game with outstanding pixel art graphics and imaginative quests to take on.

It's got clever systems that keep the story going no matter who you shoot, a smart detective mechanic about collecting clues, and random elements that keep the game fresh during your second, third, fourth go.

The game's available on PC and Mac and will set you back £10.99. Unfortunately you can't draw a gun on Steam and loot the game.

YouTube link review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5vS2mSmrcGk