Blood West

You ever wonder what life was like being a cowboy? To exist in the late 1800s and roam the wild west? Have daring adventures or settle down on the open range. Feel the sun beat down on your forehead and breathe in the fresh air. Hoping you don’t accidentally inhale sand or worse. Get mauled by a wild animal, get skin cancer, lung cancer, die of dehydration, starvation, strokes, the plague, get mugged, or dysentery. For the last thing any of us want is to die like the king of rock: right on the toilet. You know my creative energy hasn’t been good of late when I have to open up the review with a toilet joke. Anyways, despite how freaking awesome cowboys can be at times I’m not a massive fan of the western setting. Not that I hate it. I do like myself a good western and the fancy music that comes along with it, but when it comes to telling stories in media there is a lot more you can do instead. Everyone has moved on from the western setting, because it’s been done so many times before, mainly in the film industry. The Fistful of Dollars trilogy, Hang ‘em High. Unbroken, actually maybe just one third of the films Clint Eastwood had been in when he was younger, and modern examples like Django and The Ballad of Buster Scruggs.

Only one of these I’ve actually watched…. It was the funny one. I really need to take more time to watch movies. So western really isn’t my thing and this statement can be applied to games. A lot of folks believe Red Dead Redemption 2 is one of the greatest games ever made. While I do understand this statement and believe it has a wonderfully crafted narrative I don’t follow along. I think the game gets boring at times and its high level of immersion prevents me from having fun with it in the same way others say it’s fun. However, this is taste and I will say ever since my destructive deconstruction of it back in 2022 it’s a title I’ve come to appreciate more. The only other western game I’ve played is Weird West which was alright, and I’ve seen some people call Fallout: New Vegas a western game. Another statement which I can understand and this time for my favorite western developed RPG, but yet again can’t agree here. Fallout will forever be in my mind be a science fiction post apocalypse game, and there’s so much sh*t going on in New Vegas that I wouldn’t pinpoint it as mainly a western game. There has to be at least one good western game I really like. That time has finally come as I can now say Blood West, the immersive-sim stealth game by Hyperstrange, is currently my favorite western game. 

Blood West is a title I’m sure a majority of people haven’t heard about. In fact, I didn’t hear about this game until one year after the 1.0 version dropped. It’s published by New Blood Interactive, which I consider a pretty big indie studio personally. These are the guys who put out Ultrakill, Dusk, Amid Evil, and Faith: The Unholy Trinity. Where the f*ck was the promotion for this when leading up to release? Whatever, Blood West came out in late 2023 and reception for it was rather surprising. It didn’t sell a lot of copies and I wouldn’t doubt it's New Blood’s worst selling title to date, but for the folks who played it they really enjoyed what was on offer. Immersive-sims are a rarity these days. Any big developer wanting to make one now should expect it to fail. This is one of few new titles in the genre and for the most it’s a solidly designed entry. It doesn’t have the dynamic choices and reactions other immersive-sims have, but it does accommodate choices and playstyles very well. Being what is essentially Thief combined with S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Now I am not going to say Blood West is a perfect game. Ignoring my bias against western settings, I think the game has a handful of flaws and design choices that I’m surprised the developers didn’t iron out during the early access period. Stuff that makes it easy to understand why the game sits at a very positive rating on Steam rather than an overwhelmingly positive. It’s one of those games I can recommend, but to only a specific group of people. Still, Blood West is great and today we’ll be talking about why this underrated gem deserves your attention.

Buckle up buckaroos.

Story

The game takes place during the late 1880s. The age of the wild west. Shocking, I know. I mean we just spent a whole intro explaining this setting, but it is what it is. America was busy claiming land and killing anything that stood in its path like the bastards they are until one day they struck gold, literal gold. The gold rush came along and they dug every spec of the shiny element they could muster, but unlike our gold rush this one was different. The gold held magical properties, and humanity was unable to realize this until these magical properties started affecting the people around them. Transforming numerous individuals into mutated creatures thirsty for blood, and if not then creating them from nothing. The dead started to rise and soon a curse followed. Turning the once prosperous wild west into a wasteland of never ending nightmares. Beasts as far as the eye can see, and humanity struggling to stay alive during trying times. Hell had conquered the earth and all hope seemed lost. There is some hope though and eventually you come along.

A gunslinger who had been slain in battle. Buried deep beneath the earth in the hope of having eternal rest. Chosen by forces beyond to fulfill a task, and rising up from your grave. Cursed to be undead till the day your job is finished. A puppet to be pushed around for things you cannot fully comprehend. The tasks given to you are fairly simple. Get sent to an area where the curse has heavily taken hold, locate the root of the curse, and purge it. Along the way you’ll make an assortment of unlikely allies, fight the many beasts that roam, and die again and again until you eventually get better gear and skills to combat the threats before you. It’s a cycle of never ending violence and all you can do is endure.

Gameplay

Blood West is a game all about your understanding of the world and its locations, dealing with all the inhabitants in it, and being prepared for what can possibly go wrong. Usually there’s a central base where you’ll stock up on items, store what you don’t need, rest, and respawn if you are to be slain while wandering about. There are beds throughout the world which you can rest and fast travel to, but to do this you need to discover these beds and possess rooster heads. A consumable item needed for fast travel. Dying in Blood West not only sends you back to the Totem of Souls, which is usually where your central base is but also respawns certain enemies you’ve slain and gives you a fraction of a curse. Dying three times fully applies the curse to your character, and it is a debuff that makes playing the game harder. Whether that be making it harder to sneak, cutting down your maximum health or stamina, decreasing how many experience points you earn, etc. Curses can stack in Blood West with repeated deaths and the only way to lift curses is to fulfill minor tasks for the Totem of Souls. Whether that be killing a small amount of a specific enemy or bringing back certain items. There’s also a potion you can drink to lift all curses, but this isn’t unlocked until the second act, is hard to find, or a pricey purchase amongst vendors.

You’ll wander the open worlds of the game, slay enemies, and use the various weapons to either get the drop on them or defend yourself. Weapons come in mainly two forms, guns and melee weapons. You can have two weapons equipped at a time, a main arm and a side arm. The main arm slot can hold either small or large weapons, but the side arm slot can only hold smaller gear. Carefully consider what you want to have equipped for each given scenario, because opening up the inventory doesn’t pause the game and sorting your inventory is even harder. There’s a very Resident Evil 4 philosophy when it comes to inventory management. You want to make space for any guns, ammo, or healing items you want to bring. However, you want to make sure you have extra room in case you loot more while out in the field or come upon trinkets you want to sell at vendors. Just when you think you don’t have space you can move objects about until you make a slot for what you want in. Guns function exactly as you expect with iron sights allowing for more precise aiming. Melee weapons have a standard attack and charged attack with the charge being more for wanting to kill an enemy quickly if you’re able to. Melee weapons use stamina as well as running, so manage it wisely. Enemies come in a variety of flavors and you’ll have to learn how to deal with each one properly. Whether it’s through notes or player discovery.

As you kill enemies and fulfill objectives you gain experience points. Gain enough, level up, and earn three experience points. These points can be spent in the skill tab to unlock new perks and personal upgrades. Whether that be an improvement to your stats, faster reloading, being able to carry more, elemental resistance,gaining more upon using healing items, and much more. Fulfill enough objectives and at the end of each of three acts you’ll face the boss. The main thing you were preparing for as they have large pools of health and baddies to back them up during combat. Stand your ground and keep the pressure up. Don’t wanna start the encounter from square one when you die. Defeat the boss and move onto the next area. Blood West is all about being prepared for what could happen and being rewarded for raking in the most doe with each venture away from safe havens. It can be punishing at times, but hopefully you can brave all the harshness the bloody west has to provide and chase the undead curse back to where it came from.

Thoughts

Blood West is Hyperstrange’s debut title and for their first outing I’d say it was a slam dunk for the most part. A game that kept me captivated for the sixteen to seventeen hours it took to beat. I knew it was doing something right to keep me coming back despite my frustrations. Which does bring me onto my main point in that Blood West has a bunch of really weird ass design choices that you will love or hate. There’s a reason why I described this as Thief meets S.T.A.L.K.E.R as Blood West is not afraid to punish its players for making the smallest mistakes. You can be thirty minutes into an expedition. Sneaking your way through an area and taking everyone out slowly and carefully as possible. Only to then mess up, have a ferocious beast hurl towards you, kill you in a few hits, get sent back to your home base, and lose a good chunk of the progress you made. A design choice I’m familiar with seeing how I’m a fan of soulslikes, but the way Blood West handles this approach is a weird one. Blood West is a somewhat open world game. There’s three maps you’ll explore and while not being Fallout levels of big they are quite spread out. You will never know what specifically kills you at a specific time, and that’s why you constantly have to learn and adapt to your surroundings. Know what tools to bring, when to stock up, what you can and cannot handle, and switching your gear if nested. It wants you to play carefully and I respect this, but why the f*ck do you want to send someone to the starting point rather than have a save or checkpoint close by. There are the beds scattered throughout the world, but this requires a rare item to fast travel to them as well as finding them.

Now I can see a lot of people defending this design choice saying it forces the player to learn what killed them and be more prepared. This sentiment I can also understand as it reinforces the thought of being prepared and well equipped. However, the brutal deaths are made worse when you consider the curses and they stack with further deaths. Making it harder or near impossible to storm the largest strongholds in the game unless you fulfill minor tasks. Which aren’t all that minor as they require you to know the locations of certain enemies and items in the game. In the second act I recall needing five leeches to lift the four curses I had at the time. I didn’t know how to acquire leeches. I had one, but I forgot how I looted it. Turns out you have to kill the alligators all around the swamp you're in. Something you probably won’t be facing much as you’re dealing with patrolling gunmen, gluttons, savage dogs, and gunslinger ghosts. When I discovered this it was a frustrating revelation. A revelation because when I learned this it felt awesome. Frustrating because the time I suffered through just to learn this was annoying. Running back to where you need to progress is annoying. Having to fulfill small tasks to lift curses rather than spend one of these obols I got is annoying. Another criticism I forgot: not knowing what enemies will respawn after death is annoying too. A that point just make all of them respawn.

The game has terrible difficulty curves and balancing, because there were moments I felt massive problems were easier or harder than they should’ve been. The first act is when I noticed this, and the fact I noticed this in the first act scares me. Combat was incredibly hard as all I had on me at the time was an axe, revolver, and shotgun. Ammo was hard to come by and trying to buy more was difficult too. Eventually I learned how to get good at stealth, and I will say stealth is good. I may have criticized Blood West for being harsh, but if you’re the type of person who likes being punished for screwing up stealth like in Thief you will enjoy this game. Landing lethal hits feels really nice, the environments are built to give you enough points of vantage, enemies roaming around must be kept in mind because they’re only highlighted on the radar if you get spotted by one, and there are some moments where it’s better to go around them rather than try to kill them. The stealth is good… until you acquire a weapon that makes it trivial. After roaming around and getting enough loot to sell I eventually acquired a repeater. It uses pistol ammo which became easy to acquire, has a long range, a large ammo clip, and kills most enemies instantly with well placed headshots. This made any problem in the first act easy and even made the first boss trivial. The fact the difficulty fell apart once I got a specific gun was concerning. 

I then entered the second act where the game proceeded to punish me again, this time harder. Then I got a crossbow, which was a risk reward weapon I learned to work around. I invested in a perk that allows me to retrieve fired bolts, bought enough of them, and basically created a style of play where I would never have to use my main guns unless it were an emergency and I had an infinite supply of silent stealth kills. The game was still very fun, but I don’t really like how this stealth game boiled down to just cheesing problems from afar. The game advertises itself as a horror stealth immersive-sim, but I never found the game to be scary. Probably because you’re an undead gunslinger, and saying that out loud will make anyone stop being afraid. That is the coolest thing you can play as in a weird western game. My impressions of the gameplay can be easily summarized as this. I had a lot of fun playing through Blood West, understanding what the developers were going for, felt progression was satisfying, and each of the three acts and problems they all bring are varied enough to prevent the game from becoming too tedious. It’s the execution of the ideas and frustrations that’ll vary enjoyment amongst players.

Graphically the game is going for the look of retro 1990s shooters. Just like a majority of indie FPS games that have been released since Dusk. It looks good as you expect, and I like how they handled lighting and shadows. The game mainly takes place during nighttime and they did such a good job creating dreary and haunting atmospheres. My only issues are that the frame rate tends to tank at times, and despite looking good it’s another factor as to why Blood West isn’t a horror game to me. Everything is low polygons, but visually distinct enough that you can tell what a creature is without having to get close up and personal. Each of the three maps you walk across are well designed with enough sights to keep them varied, but I would say the first is the greatest. Most of the time with games going through early access they’re supposed to get better as you get further into production. This might be one where the quality of content somewhat dips. Again, I did still enjoy the later maps but the swamp isn’t amazing and the third map despite looking big kinda railroads you into certain locations. Both figuratively and literally as at some point you follow literal railroad tracks to get to the next major location you need to be.

The premise and setting are good, but you can tell not a lot of thought was put into the writing. A shame really, because near the end the writers really try to pull something off. A tale of a man who will be stuck doing the same thing over and over again. Never being granted passage into the afterlife. Witnessing the world fall apart due to mankind’s actions, and having no power to stop any of it. Forced to live out the rest of his days in a wasteland. No friends, family, or one who will remember the good deeds he did in the night. Crushed to suffer with these burdens. It’s good that everything before that wasn’t. None of the folks you meet are particularly interesting or can easily be summed up with tropes you’ve already seen before. Whether that be a lady with the heart of a fighter, a good minded doctor suffering with a condition, or a gunslinger like you but better. There’s not enough depth to both the cast and world building to care about what is going on around you. I was attached to Blood West through the gameplay, but when it comes to the world I can’t really give a damn about it. An unfair comparison, but as much as I’ve criticized Weird West and Red Dead Redemption 2 this is something both those games did very well. Either by having a good likable cast to connect or an interesting world you want to learn more about. I can recall more main story events in Weird West than here, and that game is considered fine amongst a majority of players' metrics. Something good, but not to write home about.

I will say though the end credit song was a banger and recently I’ve added it to one of my music playlists. I like the stylized cutscenes they have in between chapters. A contrast to what you see during your playtime, but I always appreciated when games do this. Kind of makes me wonder if they wanted to incorporate this style into the gameplay. In the same way another New Blood title that being Fallen Aces incorporated 2D animated characters as models into the gameplay. Just a little thought by a little old me. I may have criticized Blood West a lot during the end section of this review, but do know I recommend it. The game is doing interesting things and if the team ever decides to make a follow-up or game with a similar formula I hope they come to iterate on what are good on paper ideas. For twenty five dollars you are getting your money’s worth. I'm glad they didn't charge more for the game, because if so I would've given this a softer recommend than the one I had.

I do also want to mention that my copy of the game was gifted by a friend. Not often I get gifts from friends, but during the rare occasions I do I just want to give heavy thanks. I'll leave their names anonymous, because I don't want people looking into who they are and invading their privacy. Anyways, I really appreciate you for being with me all these years and for what you’ve done even when you didn’t have to. It’s nice to be reminded that there are people care about me, and I promise to forever do the same back in whatever way I can. This will be my last review for a bit, because as I mentioned in mu Dicey Dungeons review I have a butt load of exams coming up and I need to prioritize them if I want to have a stable future where I can provide for myself and loved ones. See you in a couple weeks and maybe the topic for next time will be my grandest one yet. Maybe it'll be an RPG. Most likely it will. Who knows. It's going to be a Persona game isn't it? Probably. Most likely. To end this longer than expected review I’m give Blood West an 8.5/10 for being pretty good. Cheers to everyone who took the time to read upon to my ramblings, and if anyone who was involved with this game are reading this review seeing how there's not a lot of coverage on this game I just want to thank you for helping with development of ambitious title.

Wish the best of luck to the folks at Hypestrange, folks at New Blood who took the chance with this out of nowhere property, and Steve Russell who I'm surprised was in this game. Who knew Garrett/Corvo Attano had it in him after all these years. Cheers and good night.