Five-Minute Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYLJS7tXPo-1XA3zeA9TkOA

In my ~25 hours with horror western FPS Blood West, I endured what can only be described as a bell curve of fun. My first hour as the game's nameless undead gunslinger of a protagonist was about as much fun as being born: I had zero context, zero skill, and was perpetually screaming—at the game’s spooky pixel monstrosities, sure, but also at its clunky, cumbersome UI and frustrating mechanics. At least, I thought they were frustrating (and justifiably so) because on death the game would slap me with a random debuff, like reduced max health or stamina, that would inevitably lead to another death and another debuff. After a couple hours of experimenting and a dozen or so deaths, my now super-nerfed stats made it impossible to kill anything, meaning I couldn’t gather the requisite materials needed to pay to remove my now mile-long list of debuffs, meaning I had to completely restart the game.

In hindsight, this self-propelled death spiral was mostly my fault, because when I first booted up Blood West, I saw pixels, demons, and guns, figured it was like any other fast-paced retro boomer shooter to come out in the last five years, so I Leeroy Jenkins’d face first into every enemy I saw. Only problem with that plan is the fact that non-headshots do next to nothing in Blood West, and having to reload mid-fight is a guaranteed death sentence.

crickets as my character takes a full nine seconds to load his rusty revolver

Like I said, I started this game like I started life: zero skill and zero context. You see, Blood West is decidedly not a new school, fast-paced pixel art boomer shooter but rather an old school “immersive sim” – a genre term I had little appreciation for before Blood West, despite having played and enjoyed games like Deus Ex HR/MKD and Dishonored 1 & 2. For the uninitiated, the term “immersive sim” broadly refers to games that prioritize immersion and player choice via environmental interactivity and realistic simulated systems... which is all nerdspeak for, say, having an easier time sneaking past a guard after you extinguish a lantern or blow out a streetlight.

Now, Blood West doesn’t have a high level of environmental interactivity—wooden fences and lanterns aren’t destructible, for example—and its simulated systems, like basic AI behavior and stealth, aren’t all that immersive, in part because the AI in Blood West is as figuratively braindead as it is literally, and stealth in this game is visualized with a boring proximity-based UI meter that spoils scares before they happen. Thus, from a mechanical standpoint, Blood West isn’t particularly good as immersive sims go... in fact, it’s pretty bad. But where Blood West fails to create immersion through its mechanics, it succeeds with a dark, atmospheric soundtrack, intricate level design, and above-average voice acting.

Welcome to our strong climb toward the zenith of Blood West’s bell curve of fun: mid-game, particularly around the end of the game’s first chapter, of which there are three. By this point, I had more or less figured out how the game wanted to be played: stealth and headshots, headshots and stealth. If I was feeling desperate, I’d even kite big groups far enough to reset their aggro and then pick ‘em off one by one with their backs turned. Gradually, I started leveling up, unlocking helpful traits, buying buff-bestowing artifacts, and upgrading my personal arsenal. I was starting to feel pretty unstoppable... just in time to get punched in the gallbladder by Blood West’s first boss: an evil tree that will pull down its pants to receive punishment if you pop its little plant root pimples (assuming you can dodge its wave of wooden spikes and cull its incessant adds). While I wasn’t exactly impressed by this or Blood West’s other boss fights, what I faced was challenging with interesting narrative relevance.

Speaking of narrative, let’s talk story. Upon resurrection, a talking totem directs you to every corner of all three maps to gather cursed artifacts for the totem to neutralize in the hopes of restoring the land. There’s a nice twist to this dynamic at the end of Chapter Two that I won’t spoil, but then the plot pretty much goes right back to making you “go there” to “get that thing.” And it’s right about now you’re probably realizing that we’re on the Blood West bell curve’s downward slope. After realizing that there was little more to this game than repetitive fetch quests, through interesting biomes and well-constructed levels, admittedly, I started to have progressively less and less fun with Blood West. The characters themselves aren’t particularly engaging, and while a variety of new and interesting enemies—like the Predator-esque super Wendigo and two-headed Nightbear—helped inject some dangerous novelty into Chapter Three, they ultimately didn’t change the fact that I felt like I was doing exactly what I did in Chapters One and Two.

Still, for $25 ($17 on sale!) and about 20 hours of content, I do think Blood West presents above average value. This said, don’t go in expecting a highly polished or replayable experience.

In the end and after averaging up our micrometrics, Blood West earns an okay aggregate MEGA score of 3.14/5 (full scoring breakdown, from “Plot” to “Sound” available in the video review), and I’m happy to answer any questions you have about the game or my review.

Thanks for reading!

[h1] A Bell Curve of Fun [/h1] [b] Five-Minute Video Review: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCYLJS7tXPo-1XA3zeA9TkOA [/b] In my ~25 hours with horror western FPS Blood West, I endured what can only be described as a bell curve of fun. My first hour as the game's nameless undead gunslinger of a protagonist was about as much fun as being born: I had zero context, zero skill, and was perpetually screaming—at the game’s spooky pixel monstrosities, sure, but also at its clunky, cumbersome UI and frustrating mechanics. At least, I thought they were frustrating (and justifiably so) because on death the game would slap me with a random debuff, like reduced max health or stamina, that would inevitably lead to another death and another debuff. After a couple hours of experimenting and a dozen or so deaths, my now super-nerfed stats made it impossible to kill anything, meaning I couldn’t gather the requisite materials needed to pay to remove my now mile-long list of debuffs, meaning I had to completely restart the game. In hindsight, this self-propelled death spiral was mostly my fault, because when I first booted up Blood West, I saw pixels, demons, and guns, figured it was like any other fast-paced retro boomer shooter to come out in the last five years, so I Leeroy Jenkins’d face first into every enemy I saw. Only problem with that plan is the fact that non-headshots do next to nothing in Blood West, and having to reload mid-fight is a guaranteed death sentence. [I] crickets as my character takes a full nine seconds to load his rusty revolver [/i] Like I said, I started this game like I started life: zero skill and zero context. You see, Blood West is decidedly not a new school, fast-paced pixel art boomer shooter but rather an old school “immersive sim” – a genre term I had little appreciation for before Blood West, despite having played and enjoyed games like Deus Ex HR/MKD and Dishonored 1 & 2. For the uninitiated, the term “immersive sim” broadly refers to games that prioritize immersion and player choice via environmental interactivity and realistic simulated systems... which is all nerdspeak for, say, having an easier time sneaking past a guard after you extinguish a lantern or blow out a streetlight. Now, Blood West doesn’t have a high level of environmental interactivity—wooden fences and lanterns aren’t destructible, for example—and its simulated systems, like basic AI behavior and stealth, aren’t all that immersive, in part because the AI in Blood West is as figuratively braindead as it is literally, and stealth in this game is visualized with a boring proximity-based UI meter that spoils scares before they happen. Thus, from a mechanical standpoint, Blood West isn’t particularly good as immersive sims go... in fact, it’s pretty bad. But where Blood West fails to create immersion through its mechanics, it succeeds with a dark, atmospheric soundtrack, intricate level design, and above-average voice acting. Welcome to our strong climb toward the zenith of Blood West’s bell curve of fun: mid-game, particularly around the end of the game’s first chapter, of which there are three. By this point, I had more or less figured out how the game wanted to be played: stealth and headshots, headshots and stealth. If I was feeling desperate, I’d even kite big groups far enough to reset their aggro and then pick ‘em off one by one with their backs turned. Gradually, I started leveling up, unlocking helpful traits, buying buff-bestowing artifacts, and upgrading my personal arsenal. I was starting to feel pretty unstoppable... just in time to get punched in the gallbladder by Blood West’s first boss: an evil tree that will pull down its pants to receive punishment if you pop its little plant root pimples (assuming you can dodge its wave of wooden spikes and cull its incessant adds). While I wasn’t exactly impressed by this or Blood West’s other boss fights, what I faced was challenging with interesting narrative relevance. Speaking of narrative, let’s talk story. Upon resurrection, a talking totem directs you to every corner of all three maps to gather cursed artifacts for the totem to neutralize in the hopes of restoring the land. There’s a nice twist to this dynamic at the end of Chapter Two that I won’t spoil, but then the plot pretty much goes right back to making you “go there” to “get that thing.” And it’s right about now you’re probably realizing that we’re on the Blood West bell curve’s downward slope. After realizing that there was little more to this game than repetitive fetch quests, through interesting biomes and well-constructed levels, admittedly, I started to have progressively less and less fun with Blood West. The characters themselves aren’t particularly engaging, and while a variety of new and interesting enemies—like the Predator-esque super Wendigo and two-headed Nightbear—helped inject some dangerous novelty into Chapter Three, they ultimately didn’t change the fact that I felt like I was doing exactly what I did in Chapters One and Two. Still, for $25 ($17 on sale!) and about 20 hours of content, I do think Blood West presents above average value. This said, don’t go in expecting a highly polished or replayable experience. In the end and after averaging up our micrometrics, Blood West earns an okay aggregate MEGA score of 3.14/5 (full scoring breakdown, from “Plot” to “Sound” available in the video review), and I’m happy to answer any questions you have about the game or my review. Thanks for reading!