Most people certainly associate the Wild West with gunfights, mustang chases, drunken brawls in saloons, and fearless cowboys doing all of the above. If you ask a gamer which game genre would be best suited to recreate the atmosphere of a Western, the answer would probably be action. At worst – an arcade. In any case, leisurely and thoughtful problem solving, like a quest, is an unsuitable format for implementing a project about the Wild West. However, it may seem so only at first glance. Taking a closer look at the new adventure game called “The Angry, the Bad and the Sober” from the Russian team Litera, There should be no questions left about the most successful form for embodying a real Western.
Well, it’s a very wild West
A simple American farmer, Jack, accidentally gets into trouble. He would live for himself, but not worry, work during the day, relax in the evening with a bottle, but then a horse with a dying Indian arrives at his ranch, followed by a gang of bandits. The thugs, angry, burn the entire farm of our hero. The guy, without thinking twice, goes to Westtown for a shooting competition. There he will have to fight with the offenders and, incidentally, receive a hefty prize for the reconstruction of the damaged ranch. It would seem that there is nothing complicated here – after a little training – here comes William Tell? But there is a nuance. We are, after all, in the wild, wild West. And the competition here is not home either! Only bandits can be participants, and only if there is space in the cemetery. Can you guess where this is going??
The plot of the adventure game suffers Non-uk-casinos.co.uk from neither realism nor adequacy. But you can’t deny him the originality of his transitions. Our character will begin his journey with looting – he will search the corpse of a traveling salesman gnawed by a vulture. Then he will do a good deed: he will free the priest, who, in turn, will give Jack a “tip” to a gang robbing a train. And so on: each subsequent plot twist turns out to be completely unexpected, given the circumstances of the previous one. The Wild West is a place where surprises are found at every turn. And they hold their tail with a pistol.
The developers drank the wrong tequila?
The guys from Litera They clearly did not suffer from a lack of a sense of humor, nor did they suffer from a deficiency of “what to drink” or “what to smoke”. Almost all the dialogues and comments that delight us in “The Evil, the Bad and the Sober” with enviable regularity suggest similar conclusions. Perhaps this adventure game is one of those rare cases when you really want to listen to lines and conversations, and not quickly scroll through them to get to the next task. Particularly endearing are the comments from Jack himself, which he gives with enviable tenacity to every object, character or phenomenon. Often the hero not only shares his thoughts about what he sees in front of him, but also refers the attentive player to some funny parody or allusion. Run into a statement like: “These are the wrong cacti. They make the wrong tequila out of them" can be done almost at the very beginning of the game, on the way to the stagecoach. Further – more. The armor in the office of one of the enemies will receive the "Power Armor MK3" certification from Jack, which is especially touchingly combined with the appearance of the iron pig. Anyone who has watched the movie "Iron Man" will understand where the dog is buried. By the way, about burials. One of the most colorful places in the game is the cemetery. Among others, a certain Harry Houdini is buried there, on whose grave it is written: “Maybe I’m here, maybe I’m not.”.
A real cowboy is not afraid of bulls!
The riddles in The Wicked, the Bad and the Sober are rarely difficult, and the correct solution is almost always logical. The developers were not very successful in implementing the idea of incorporating arcade elements into an adventure game. We will have to fight with a bandit, jump on a killer bull and, finally, shoot at the competition. All three tasks are for reaction speed. Unfortunately, the controls in these mini-games are not very convenient, and it is impossible to save during the passage of such an episode, which can cause significant irritation for gamers accustomed to the leisurely and calm rhythm of completing quests.
One can only say a good word about the poor woman’s schedule. Here we are dealing with the usual move used by developers of low-budget projects: a supposedly 3D adventure game in fact can only boast 3D models with completely static backdrops. If the interiors with landscapes fit perfectly into the atmosphere, then the very modest animation, on the contrary, destroys the charm of an overall good game.
However, one way or another, “The Angry, the Bad and the Sober” is one of the few Russian worthy adventure games released recently. Despite some obvious shortcomings, the game is nevertheless exciting, perfectly recreates the flavor of a Western and simply delivers pleasant moments thanks to its liveliness and wit.
Pros: lively plot; charming humor; Wild West atmosphere.
Cons: inconvenient controls in mini-games; mediocre graphics.