Review – Westerado: Double Barreled
Your home burned to the ground and your family murdered, you must seek vengeance wild west style in Westerado: Double Barreled. This game is part whodunit, part quest running, and part action shoot out. It’s a rough life out in the retro wastes of Westerado and you need to be the toughest hombre out there if you plan to survive. So put on yer fanciest duds, strap on your iron, and giddyup!
The main quest to be solved is the question of who killed your family. Gathering clues is the reward of completing other tasks for townsfolk and reminds me of playing Guess Who? with a western twist. As you gather clues, you’ll lock down an image in your journal to help you accuse the right lowly snake who done crossed you. You don’t need to get every single detail before you start drawing your gun in conversations and accusing people, but you’re less likely to start town-wide shootouts if you know who you’re gunning for.
If you’re a completionist, it’s going to take a few runs to experience all of the possible conflicting quest lines. Do you help the rancher or the oil tycoon that wants him off of the land? I spent way more time exploring the wilderness and helping people than was at all necessary for finding the murderer. I just wanted to see what was out there to discover and I’m sure that there’s still plenty more to find. Westerado can probably be beaten in no more than two hours if getting to the ending is what you’re all about, but then you’d be missing so much of the game. Why not help the ghost find Petey the pickaxe instead of running off guns blazing after the murder?
The game design is very pixelated and retro. It works specifically to enhance the experience of knowing that the murderer could be anyone. Maybe it’s that guy right over there! With everyone looking so similar, it’s near impossible to figure it out and jump to the end game with only a few clues. The problem I had with the visual style is that it made it hard for me to figure out whether I’d found one of the three unique hats to be discovered (the fourth is a miner helmet acquired through a quest) and learned at the haberdasher. It’s not in any way important to do that unless you’re a crazy completionist like me.
One of the biggest parts of Westerado is the gun-slinging. I used a controller to play (it has full support for Xbox 360 controllers) and the need to cock my six shooter each time before firing made the shooting that much more visceral. The action is fun, but the problem I had with it was trying to line up hit boxes. I had a bit of difficulty always hitting my mark even when it looked like my bullet trail went straight through an enemy. The hardest part is trying to knock off a hat when I need the bonus health. Since I’m not great at remembering to run out of the way, I needed bonus health a lot. There are a variety of guns to buy from the shop in game with any cash you earn on your quest for justice. The hero starts with a regular six shooter, but I preferred switching up to the dual pistols as soon as possible. When used properly, they can shoot left and right simultaneously.
Westerado: Double Barreled is rootin’ tootin’ love letter to spaghetti westerns. Individual play-throughs can be short, but the variety of quests, randomized villain, and three additional characters to be unlocked add a fair amount of replayability. There is a co-op mode as well, but I personally preferred to strike out on my own and explore at my leisure. For those with ice water in their veins, there’s also an iron man mode that will delete your save game when you die. If you’re looking for something quick and fun that can be played a couple times over a weekend, give this a shot. Westerado: Double Barreled is currently available exclusively on PC through Steam.
