Blood West

Excellent stealth game and I emphasize "stealth". Going in Rambo style is not how this is supposed to be played, just keep that in mind. Every situation needs to be approached carefully, with an espace plan if things go wrong and so on. And I love this game for exactly that because it is done so well. A lot of weapons, amulets, upgrades and items that lead to a lot of different playstyles and I dare say there is something there for everyone. You like big shotguns, no problem. Knife is your thing, go crazy. Blood, sweat and tears difficutly is challenging but still fair. You just need to know what you are doing, which enemies take how many bullets from this or that weapon, etc.. I have not summed it up, but I would say from my playtime, about 180 hrs are main game, 10 hrs Dead Man's Promise and the rest is from Scavengers. Zero technical issues and voice acting is top notch! I recommend this even for full price. Get it as bundle with both DLC's and you won't be dissapointed - if you are into stealth games. Feel like I have to mention that again.

Неожиданно классная игра. Когда ожидаешь чего-то на уровне «ну пойдёт», а по факту оказывается: «ниxyя себе, и я такое пропустил!» По скриншотам можно подумать, что это бумер-шутерок, но это будет явное заблуждение. Скорее всего, правильно будет сказать, это иммерсивный симулятор с упором на стелс, и я подчеркиваю: именно стелс. Типа того, что вы видели в "Deus Ex: Human Revolution", "Dishonored", "Prey". Хотя там герои вполне самодостаточны и без стелса, тутже это жизненная необходимость. Играть в стиле Рэмбо вы можете попробовать, но вам очень быстро объяснят, затолкав сапог в сраку, как вы неправы. Тут к каждой ситуации нужно подходить осторожно, имея план действий на случай непредвиденных обстоятельств и так далее. Множество оружия, амулетов, улучшений и предметов, которые позволяют использовать множество разных стилей игры, и я осмелюсь сказать, что каждый найдет что-то для себя. Любите мощные дробовики? Нет проблем. Нож — ваша фишка? Да здравствует! Мечтали в детстве быть Чингачгуком? Томагавки и луки — ваш выбор! Вам просто нужно знать, что вы делаете, сколько пуль нужно выпустить из того или иного оружия, и так далее. В общем, подведём итоги: это офигенный иммерсивный стелс-боевик, где: множество разных вариантов развития персонажа, куча секретов, захватывающий мир, отличный саундтрек, невероятное разнообразие врагов, увлекательный игровой процесс.

Finished the main story and it`s one of the best immersive sims I`ve played, so many different builds you can do, lots of secrets to find, immersive world, soundtrack, enemy variety is insane, gameplay loop is fun but the main game is rather short, unless you want to get all the unique loot and secrets. Dead Man`s Promise is a story expansion that covers one of the subcharacter`s life before the main game`s story and it`decent, adds some new skills and weapon types, but it`s super short, took me about 5 hours while getting all of the items and achievements. Scavengers adds a roguelite mode to the game with some meta progression and random missions you can do indefinitely. This one kind of disappointed me, there`s not that much variation and if you get a god sale/drop right off the bat the game becomes trivial, chicken leg necklace is one of the strongest items in the base game and this DLC is no different, if you have that you can pretty much get some of the best weapons in the game by just going through random points of interest, as these usually contain ethereal enemies which won`t care about you. There`s unlocks for every few days which stop at day 30, after which you can just play to do either secrets, collect figurines or just farm money/loot. Cool addition but lacking something, in my opinion. Maybe challenge board which unlocks some of the over powered stuff that shouldn`t be in the pool right off the bat, or something similar to that. The best thing about the game is its stealth mechanic, it`s literally the `if I can`t see you you can`t see me` type of stealth, meaning you can hide behind a broom handle and enemies wouldn`t see you as long as you kept the broom handle on their face.

I love Blood West to bits. I knew very little about it going in. I read reviews from people stating that they misconstrued it as a Boomer Shooter before realizing that it was more of a stealth based game of exploration, and I figured that maybe it could be up my alley, depending on how it goes. I was quite simply unprepared for how much I would fall in love with it. It's the first game in a long time that felt like I simply couldn't put it down, the gameplay so addicting to me that it quite frankly came at the expense of the productivity of my daily work. This isn't a fast-paced game about aggressive combat; Blood West is really more of an action RPG about sneaking around your enemies either to get past them safely, or to take them out from behind. The greatest incentive to go in quiet comes in form of your enemies' attack power which, especially early on, is very dangerous. Even the simplest enemy hits like a freight train, and going in guns blazing will have you dead in seconds. But since melee shots to unaware enemies come with an enormous damage bonus, you yourself are quite deadly as well, offering a good balance where your enemies have the advantage in direct combat while you have the advantage in stealth. What I love about this dynamic is how it makes very encounter feel meaningful. No enemy is simple fodder and every encounter requires some amount of thought to come out of it unscathed. Furthermore, since guns and ammo are rare, the act of firing a shot is in and of itself usually done out of a sense of urgency, a decision you don't make lightly. Perhaps intentionally, this aspect is enhanced by the sound design, where guns don't just sound loud, but downright dramatic, making each pull of the trigger feel like a profound inflection point of the encounter. Much of your time shooting will ultimately be defensive, saved for when your attempt at stealth goes south and you're forced to pull out your shotgun to try and hastily put down an opponent or two before the situation careens out of control. Varied enemy types with highly differing behavior and danger levels, as well as different types of ammunition better suited to certain types of enemies than others, fill out a simple yet compelling combat system that feels more akin to a survival horror game than a typical first-person shooter. But by far the best element of Blood West is the exploration. The base game is not organized level-by-level but rather, gives you 3 open-world maps to explore at your leisure. Very little is blocked off to you even from the start and hidden throughout the world is rare artifacts and powerful weapons to reward the player patient enough to search every dark corner of the Barren Lands. The loot system is similar to other ARPGs, with weapons often coming in multiple forms of rarity, from rusty and dull, to magical and cursed. This was the aspect that kept me coming back the most, as I can't express enough how rewarding it was, especially early on, to find your first decent implement of destruction to even the odds against your undead foes. The game's difficulty can seem intimidating at first but assuming you learn all the right lessons in the first chapter, you should find your deaths few and far between from then on. Players patient enough to respect the stealth mechanics will be mostly fine. As of writing this, I've completed the base game and only died 3 times, all in the first chapter (not that the 3rd chapter didn't make some very hostile gestures toward my life), and two of those can absolutely be attributed to lackadaisical sneaking my part. One mechanic some may find frustrating is that dying comes with the penalty of curses that make the gameplay harder until you find a means of cleansing your soul. However, there are items you can find to avoid this fate, even in death, and I've never once actually had a soul-flaw or curse, despite dying a handful of times. I could say more and would love to but I'm trying not to make this review go on forever so the best thing I can say is: Blood West absolutely rules, and you should buy it. It's worth the base price, and as of writing this review, the base game is on sale for under $7 so this is truly a no brainer.

The gameplay is fun and challenging, however there is a big issue with the voice acting in this game. Specifically the character "Shaman", voiced by "Laith Chazz". From all I can find about this individual, he is a white American who does voice acting professionally, including "Native American" voices. I shouldn't have to explain why it is offensive and disrespectful to not only cast a white person for an Indigenous person's role, but for him to also put on an impersonation of these people. Indigenous people are real and exist, and are already incredibly marginalized. They should have been consulted in their inclusion in this game. And if they were and they said it was disrespectful, that should have been enough of an explanation to decide on a different route for the story. There are indigenous peoples who have collaborated with western media after being asked and given permission, such as with the game "Tell me Why". The developers there collaborated with the Huna Heritage Foundation to ensure they represent the area and peoples respectfully. That is the expected process of any company when they are including marginalized peoples. Furthermore, under the same umbrella. The creature known as the W**digo, which I will just refer to as 'the creature' from now on, is incredibly insensitive and makes no effort to respect the culture in which the folklore originates. The folklore of the creature originates form the Algonquin people, whom generally lived east of the Great Lakes. If you look into these people, and look into the folklore, it is extremely emphasized that the creature's name should never be talked about or thought of. It is a being with strong spiritual energy, and it is insensitive to throw the creature's name around so casually. In this game, the creature is not only spoken aloud on numerous occasions, but there is an entire enemy dedicated to it. Regardless of the racism involved, the area in which the creature would have originated makes no sense to even exist in this game. There was no reason that it should have been included, save for the trope of depicting a sacred spirit as a powerful scary monster that's bullet fodder. For these reasons, I can not in good conscience recommend this game.

pretty cool game if you start very hard it's brutal until you get a feeling of weapons and amulets, but game has nice flow, so worth to endure. DLC Scavengers rouge-lite really fun, slightly repeatable and brutal tips -Experience Perk (T3 apparently at lv27 starts to give value so yea ...) reset skill tree is available later on, expensive (2000g), but with ExpGain and MoneyGain shouldn't be hard - but skipping both Money and Exp is fine -KillValue amulet it doesn't reset if it's unequipped -Storage has unlimited space -Booze -keep 5 bottles for quest in Canyons -chapter 2 -when you find 2 crow black skulls, use them to be teleported onto unreachable location loot -coin necklace location changes (for me upstairs) -loot bags -no longer found on map, all are bought from shop -couldn't find medalion of life

This was fun for a bit, but its problems really grate on you the more you play. Unfortunately, it's all a little too basic. The game confuses outdated for classic; many of its systems are frustrating. The combat and enemy AI is very one-dimensional, with the same one or two options being the most optimal. It doesn't matter how cool the environment looks when there's absolutely no way to interact with it and meaningfully use it to your advantage. It actively discourages experimentation with a boring skill tree (like really, a skill that boosts XP gain?) and expensive/rare respec, as well as the boring/tedious artifact system. It sucks because there were weapons and builds I wanted to try (like HP loss weapons, alcohol build, and melee build) but I would have had to farm to respec. Farming is fine, but not when you're selling the game as a compact 20-hour experience. It also falls into the same consumables trap that developers learned to avoid a long time ago. You are drowned in a multitude of potions that you save for later, 'til you realize you're halfway through the game and you haven't touched them. I haven't even mentioned the atrocious inventory system that has you peddling items across the map back to your stash, or backpacks that I have to manually go through and sort (minor gripe but it all adds up to an overall tedious experience). Oh yeah, and the death system sucks. Punishing dying with curses just... isn't fun. It encourages you to fall back to the same boring sneak n' stab rather than trying something new for once. It sucks because I love so much about Blood West -- the art direction, the way weapons feel, the open world. It's too bad the devs seem caught up in a bad kind of nostalgia.

New Vegas without VATS. It can be a little hostile to start with, but once you get the hang of it its addictive as hell.

This game is so dang good. It's difficult, be warned. Only $6 now for summer sale! that is a great, great deal.

I often see this game being called an immersive sim, but I don’t quite agree. While it does have the level design typical of the genre, it lacks variety in how you can interact with the world. At its core, this is an open-world shooter with a strong emphasis on stealth. Sure, you can try to play without it, but the huge number of enemies and their high damage make that approach not very pleasant — especially in the early stages of the game. Another thing that hurts aggressive playstyles is the lack of resources. While the ammo problem gets solved fairly quickly, the shortage of healing items will be felt throughout the entire game. The shooting mechanics are well done — hitting enemy weak spots feels impactful and satisfying. The voice acting is generally pleasant, and with rare exceptions, listening to NPCs is enjoyable. The soundtrack is okay — nothing special, but it doesn’t get annoying. The only real standout is the song in the ending, which is genuinely good. As for Dead Man’s Promise DLC, it’s quite solid: more than 10 new enemy types, lots of new weapons. Unfortunately, there’s a downside — it’s very short. You can finish it in 5 hours, and even less if you don’t clear out the whole map.