12 Is Better Than 6 Preview

Dear Judith,

It's been a hard summer out West. The cattle have been dying by the dozen and bandits are getting more brazen with the horses. Doc's left town and little Timmy has typhoid. To top it all off, my gaming PC's got more dust in it than your grandma's attic. It's hard out here for a cowboy, but at least I don't have to live in the downright brutal world of 12 is better than 6.

When I take off my chaps and have a seat in that old lacquered wood chair you gave me, I usually play colorful games with fancy three dimensional graphics, or at least a pixel-art theme. Not so with this little cyber-varmint. It's all in this hand-drawn, black and white style that looks like it's straight out of a sketchbook. The lack of color can make the top down perspective difficult to parse. More than once I’ve lost track of the large sombrero of the main character as it blended in with the rest of the environment. It's topped off with a flourish of crimson when you shoot bad guys, but for the most part the colorless theme makes the environments and characters look stark and barren. Appropriate, given the locale and the gameplay.

As you might expect, this game's all about shootin' and stabbin' your way through areas chock-full of bad guys. Be they outlaws or lawmen, they all take just one shot or shank to kill and the main character, Juan, is mostly the same. Once or twice I got a face full of red jelly on my screen and didn't die outright, but this was a rare occurrence. Sadly, Juan's fragility is the only commonality he shares with his foes. Enemies have lightning reflexes and are usually all alerted by a single gunshot, mobbing poor Juan like the townsfolk did with that snake oil salesman last week (still haven't gotten the taste of ash out of my mouth). Even players with strong reaction times will have difficulty, however, because of the fiddly gunplay mechanics.

While left click fires as usual in shooter games, right click pulls back the hammer of the selected weapon, which must be done either before or after every shot, depending on the gun. Since the game is very stingy with ammunition, ol' Juan's best bet for having a loaded iron in his hand is swapping it out with an enemy's. Shotguns, lever action rifles, and revolvers change hands frequently and each have different loading mechanics, which can lead to some confusion. However, when I did manage to pull off a successful string of murders, it felt great. It was like lassoin' a feral stud and riding him without a saddle. Wish I could say the same about the dialogue, which was more like talkin' to the town hatter.

Most of the gabbin' done by Juan is of the "Damn Gringo!" and "Do this for me before I kill you" variety. Not much of a talker, that one, and his lines tend to get repetitive. He even mumbles to himself about gameplay mechanics that I was already introduced to earlier. NPCs aren't much better, with most of them spouting insults with varying amounts of homophobia, racism, and spelling errors. All three are too voluminous to feel like a gritty retelling of a wild West story and smack more of lazy writing.

Developers Inkstain studios have provided novel visuals and a fun new twist on Hotline Miami style action, but they'll need to refine it if they want to produce something special. I'll write to you when I reach Sacramento. I hope the Northbound wagon has wifi.