Gameplay Continued...
Wanted : Dead or Alive …
You also have several mini-missions to complete in between the story. There are wanted posters where you can choose to capture or kill the culprit in question. Killing is the easy bit, taking people alive is a bit harder. You can grab people and hold them hostage for a brief period which is great when you’re in a gun fight because they become your shield. But you need to be very close to grab them and it’s a little tricky to get near some of the wanted villains.
But there are also ranch missions (herding cattle and the like), gambling missions (poker) and post missions too, where you have to get from one spot to another as quickly as possible. These help to improve your stats and it’s advisable to do this before proceeding with the main story. I enjoyed the gambling quite a lot, but it was unfortunately free to enter the competition and so losing wasn’t such a bad thing.
There are also a couple of hunting missions to undertake where you have to creep up on ‘the white wolf’ or similar and shoot it in the head with an arrow. Well, you can use a gun but you don’t get as much cash for it. These missions were quite good but completely similar in every respect. Oddly enough, the final beast is a huge bear. I say odd, because pretty much the first thing you ever kill in the game is a bear – so it’s not really that hard at all!
The Ugly…
Okay, so that’s the game, and I really did enjoy it! But there are several rather blatant and unnecessary shortfalls. I played the game on normal and dear lord was it easy! Seriously, if you buy the game, do NOT play it on normal. Try hard or insane. I’m playing it again on insane and it’s much more satisfying this way. On normal mode you can take about 6 shots before death and even then it’s a miracle if you even get hit by the baddies. On insane it’s 1 or 2 shots and the baddies are very accurate. I can only imagine what the easy setting is like!
Secondly, boy is this game short! On normal mode it took about 8 hours to complete it. That includes all the mini-missions and everything. 8 hours?! Even with the game being so easy, this is not a suitable length of time for any game. Black mark!
Half of the problem is that the main story itself isn’t all that long, just as you’re starting to get into it, it’s time to finish. The other half of the problem is the mini-missions. There simply aren’t enough of them and there isn’t enough variety in the missions either. There are so many little bits in the game that are really nice and yet you only experience them once!
A Fist Full of Dollars…
The money you earn comes in relatively small bundles. $30 is the most I think I ever earned from a single mission and that was a bit disappointing for me. I want to be able to earn vast wads of cash! You don’t have to buy bullets or ammo of any kind, you find them lying about the map so you don’t really have any cares as to how many shots you fire. You can buy upgrades form the town shopkeepers but they’re all priced the same, and really upgrading your weapons isn’t as exciting as it should be.
In fact, the problem I have is that there are no impromptu missions or tasks you can complete and earn a quick buck, and that you can continue to complete indefinitely. There is a set amount of money you can earn in this game – and that’s it!
Another oddity is the fact that you can scalp people. I have nothing against scalping people but there is simple no reason for it in this game. You can buy the scalping knife and then you can scalp people. It’s got nothing to do with the story and you don’t keep a record of scalps – so why? This could have been put to much better use as a hunter and you could have skinned animals and sold their pelts in town.
You can’t rob people of money or weapons which is a shame. You can go into some town buildings but there’s no point because there’s nothing there, except in the gambling dens…and there’s only two of them! You never get to race you horse with other people (except once, when you’re learning to ride). You only get ambushed by cowboys, never by Indians.
For a Few Dollars more…
I could go on. I could go on for days and days about what is wrong and what could be better about this game. But I’m not going to because I really enjoyed it anyway. Despite the downfalls it has a truly great feel to the game.
I was going to say that with the next generation of consoles on the way, this could be made into something magnificent – but then I realized it’s actually been released on the Xbox 360, so I won’t go there! But now they have this game to build upon, the developers could create an absolute masterpiece when it comes to bringing out the sequel.
Not only that, but this is a wild west game! Hooray! Much as I love marching through WWII, this is a refreshing change to most games coming out. If they had a development team the size of Rockstar’s GTA team, this game would have been tonk!
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