Weird West test: an immersive sim like no other

The so-called games immersive sim are rare lately. So when the co-creators of Dishonored et Prey, two excellent representatives of the genre, offer their own twist with a title in isometric view, in a Far West revisited with sauce dark fantasy and edited by Devolver Digital, our curiosity can only be greatly piqued. Welcome in Weird west !

Weird West test: an immersive sim like no other Read the conclusionWeird West

Immersive sim and isometric view: a successful bet
An intriguing universe
Choices that really influence the story
A singular artistic touch

Unintuitive use of weapons and skills
Laborious inventory management
strawberry artificial intelligence
Quite dated animations and techniques

Originally planned for the start of this year, the very first and ambitious game from WolfEye Studios finally had to be pushed back to March 31 for its formula to be refined. Let's say it right away: the wait was well worth the cost!

Test carried out on PC (via Steam) using a code provided by the publisher. Weird West will be released on March 31 on PC, PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X|S for 39,99 euros for its basic version, as well as on Game Pass.

The Huntress, the Snout, the Native, the Lycanthrope and the Occultist

As its name suggests, Weird West takes place in a revisited Wild West (a space-time already rarely exploited in a video game format) where cowboys, outlaws, Native Americans and religious people flirt cheerfully with the occult . The strange and atypical world imagined by WolfEye Studios is thus surveyed by spirits, beastmen, wizards, cultists and other entities from dark fantasy.

It is in this dark atmosphere veiled in mystery that the story of the game begins, with a character tied to a chair in a room whose only decoration is five mysterious portraits. The character will be scarified with a red hot iron with a strange mark allowing, you will no doubt have understood, to take possession of the body of the five characters appearing on the paintings.

No surprise here, the incarnated characters had been revealed beforehand by WolfEye Studios and Devolver Digital: it will act in the order of a bounty hunter, a man-pig, a native American, a a werewolf and an occultist. All have their own background, skills, gameplay, and purpose in the Weird West. Our adventure therefore begins with Jane Bell, an ex-bounty hunter who has hung up coat, hat and six-guns for a simple life as a farmer with her family.

Of course, this tranquility will only be short-lived: as we take possession of his body and lose the memories of our host in the process, bandits from a network of cannibals led by a Siren kill our son and kidnap our husband. Jane Bell therefore has no choice but to put on her bounty hunter mantle again to find her other half.

The scene is thus set to immerse us in a most intriguing story, at the heart of an atypical game despite some influences such as Red Dead Redemption and Fallout/Wasteland.

Let's go back to the artistic direction of Weird West. With its very comic strip identity, which is unmistakably reminiscent of the style of Telltale games, the title from WolfEye Studios clearly detonates from the modern video game landscape and manages to subtly alternate between warm and oppressive atmospheres.

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Many passages in the game are particularly macabre.

We regret that the character animations and the technique suffer from this artistic choice, suffering from not very fresh textures. The artistic envelope, however, benefits from a soundtrack that skilfully mixes Far West and dark fantasy atmospheres to carry us throughout the adventure: the promise of a good thirty hours of pleasure.

The Weird West isn't just about two choices

We discover the Weird West with Jane Bell, and first of all the general map of the game. Like a Wasteland 2, we will have to go from point A to point B thanks to this map. On the way, we can of course come across new areas or make random encounters (some friendly, others much less). Note that many areas of this vast map (in addition to those of the main quest) have been largely recycled, to the detriment of the immersion yet so dear to WolfEye Studios.

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The Weird West is dotted with places to visit...often recycled.

And we fall back here on what makes the greatest originality and the strength of Weird West, the original bias of offering an immersive sim game in isometric view. It is clear that the bet is frankly successful. To advance in the story, the game will offer you large areas that you will be free to explore as you wish. Want to access a secret room, but a small army of mercenaries stands in your way? Negotiate with their rogue boss to gain access to the information you seek, adopt stealth and cunning, or make the talk by gunning down everyone (even story-critical characters)!

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The same situation can be approached in various ways depending on your preferences... or your mood.

In terms of storyline development, Weird West is not about to tie you up and lug you around on his horse. On the contrary, the game allows you to build your story as you wish, making it necessarily unique. Know that many of your choices will have a real impact on the Weird West, whether it's your current incarnation or the next. If you behave like a notorious mobster, bounty hunters may hunt you down throughout the game world in order to enrich themselves on your corpse freshly stuffed with pellets. Past allies and enemies will notably come back to remind you of your good memories when you least expect it, and it is also possible that certain dead may rise from the ground to haunt you!

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This mercenary in the pay of a network of cannibals is consumed by remorse. But is it wise to save it?

Beyond driving the story, the gameplay, which is particularly flexible, gives you a certain degree of freedom in the way you approach situations. For example, you can stack crates to reach otherwise inaccessible places, fill a bucket with water and throw it in the face of your opponents to wet and electrocute them, or throw a lit lantern or a barrel of TNT and shoot it. to deal high area damage.

It may be a trivial detail, but it is so rare to see such simple and yet so immersive interactions in this type of game that Weird West has truly won us over with the freedom it offers.

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Sometimes just the smart use of decor can open a lot of doors!

Know that a day / night cycle is also part of the game and that obviously, the cover of the night will be conducive to taking sleeping opponents by surprise or to blithely loot cities with impunity.

The isometric view also lends itself perfectly to this set, offering us necessarily much better visibility than the usual FPS of immersive sims. In a nutshell, WolfEye Studios hands down its audacious challenge.

Pour unites poignée de dollars

Let's take advantage of the mention of the overall gameplay of the game to dwell on what will occupy us most of the time: the development of our character, the fight... And the management of our inventory. As we explore the Weird West, we will collect two kinds of artifacts that will unlock passive skills and talents.

Skills can be acquired with Relics of Nihm and are divided into two categories: those specific to the character we are currently playing, and those specific to weapons. Weird West asks us to find a delicate balance between exploiting the strengths of our character or using and abusing the skills of our weapons, some of which prove to be particularly powerful. Their use in very typical twin-stick shooter fights is however not very intuitive, the arrangement of the associated keys having sometimes cost us a few precious seconds by tangling our brushes. To use our skills, we will need action points that can be recovered with a potion provided for this purpose or by resting in a Saloon or under the stars.

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The skills are on the one hand exclusive to each character and on the other to each weapon.

Talents can be acquired through Golden Aces. Their particularity is that, unlike skills, the points invested in talents will be common to the five characters. Weird West strongly encourages you to explore its vast world to find as much as possible. Inevitably, with each new character that we embody, the difficulty will increase crescendo, making the development of its troop essential.

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Passive talents are shared between the five characters.

The equipment can also be improved in forges accessible in certain cities thanks to nuggets of rare ore, copper, silver to gold, or by skinning wild animals. This is also an opportunity to mention the management of the inventory, which is quite laborious.

Limited to only 48 places, it will indeed be quickly filled with our equipment, our healing items, our dynamites and other projectiles, as well as the resources to improve the equipment or the various junk for sale. We are thus often forced to go back and forth incessantly to reach the cities, which artificially slows down progress.

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Inventory management will often be a real headache that we would have done well without.

However, it will be possible to buy (or steal) a horse, drastically accelerating our travels on the world map, whose inventory capacity is however limited to 32 places. If you prefer to be surrounded by allies, you can recruit two of them, who can eventually serve as a mule… Provided they survive the adventure. After finishing the story of each character, you can even find your previous incarnation, recruit it and collect its equipment. Likewise, mount inventory and items stored in a vault in the bank will be transferred between characters.

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We can recruit the characters that we have embodied before to facilitate our task.

To earn hard dollars, essential to progress and this time not transferable from one character to another, many activities other than collecting junk are available. The most lucrative are of course the bounties on the heads of notorious bandits, dead or alive. This will therefore involve going alone or with recruits to an area occupied by a large band of outlaws and slaughtering or capturing the subject of the bounty.

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Bounties are among the most lucrative and fun side activities in the game.

We should also stress the fact that stealth is particularly important in Weird West. In addition to allowing us to shoot down most of the enemies in the game with a single blow behind the neck, they are unfortunately as inept as a twirler. Limited field of vision, extremely weak immediate memory, everything or almost everything pushes us to play it discreetly, rather than participating in rather rough gunfights which risk costing us precious resources (and often companions preferring to remain stupidly under the fire of the enemy). enemy than taking cover).

Particularly liking this approach, it didn't bother us too much, but may be a warning to those who tend to be trigger-itchy.

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The fights are often a bit messy, but still satisfying.

Weird West: the opinion of JVFR

With Weird West, WolfEye Studios takes the daring bet to offer a rarely represented immersive sim genre, in a rarely exploited Far West universe, mixed with dark fantasy in a rich and intriguing story entirely driven by our choices, all in isometric view. And as we have already underlined, this bet is frankly successful.

A few elements such as somewhat messy fights due to skills that are not very intuitive to use, perfectible artificial intelligence and laborious inventory management can certainly hinder an overall refreshing and exhilarating adventure to go through. However, it would be a shame to stop at these small nuisances, as the Weird West is so generous in what it offers. A truly unique game, and a hit on the bull's eye for the very first title from WolfEye Studios, which has unsheathed us a beautiful nugget of gold!

Weird west

For the first game from their new studio, the co-creators of Prey and Dishonored hit the nail on the head. The daring bet to mix immersive sim, isometric view and Wild West mixed with occult is globally successful. Not to mention the storyline, rich, mixing the fate of five unique characters whose choices have a real impact. Weird West deserves our hats off.