Відео

You're better off not watching anything from IGN, Kotaku, Polygon and the rest you mentioned. They're trash

I should love Blood West because Stalker and Thief are some of my favorites, but it's got some major issues that make it more frustrating than enjoyable. Stealth is unreliable and too simplistic, often leading to cheap deaths thanks to buggy AI. There's no variety in enemy spawns, they just walk the same paths waiting to be shot from afar. That's fine in a soulslike with melee combat, but in an FPS, it means that combat is only fun when you screw up. Soul flaws could've been a great mechanic to add variety to gameplay if they changed the way you play in a fun way, ie 1-hit-kill for both you and the enemies. As it is, they're just debuffs requiring busy work.

What’s the music used at 39:08?

'Lots and Lots to Read...' as if that were a _Bad_ thing. It was not just once that I heard a Fellow Gamer make this complaint... while we spent _HOURS_ online Typing at each other. I hope I don't need to point out the Irony for this. Please. The Truth is that I have watched tons of players, who slaveringly demand all that expensive 'immersive' Voice Acting, skip through it when it's not going fast enough, if they bother to listen to the dialogue at ALL. The actual cost of all this Cinematic Nonsense, for RPG's anyway, is a gutting of actual Player decisionmaking. Just imagine if even one of those $250+ Million-Dollar Monsters dumped the voices and graphics that are initially awesome, then shallow & meaningless after Ten Minutes, and put that money towards 200 talented Writers who made a cRPG that actually came moderately close to an Average-Talent GM & a group of decently talented players, when it came to accounting for agency.

While the game is Great and will remain one of the best 'Action-Adventure' Games ever made (NOT, However, an RPG. See my previous post), when I first played the game in 1999 at age 28, the ending _Infuriated_ me. As I said, the game has no roleplaying in it, so the Devs making the choice for you, to be Moronic Cannon Fodder, is their Right. But I will always wish that there was an option to refuse to be an idiot. Even if the same thing ultimately happens (By some other poor schmuck coming along & getting gobbled), the point that you had rudimentary wits enough to say, 'No.' Would be much appreciated. Heck even 'Half-Life', CERTAINLY no RPG(!), respected the player enough to give them a similar choice.

Excellent review, but one thing needs to be made crystal clear- Diablo is NOT an RPG. It has many of the external trappings of one (Killing Monsters, Getting Loot, Leveling Up.) However, like parts of a Car thrown together to resemble one, it is missing THE most important piece- The Engine. In a Roleplaying game, that is called 'Player Agency'. In today's Postmodern Society, people love to define words based on personal preference & not objective evidence. If you tell them what an RPG ) _is_, many will be quick to respond- 'But... that's not what an RPG is to _ME_!' However, a Doctor is not a Lawyer and an Apple is not an Orange, no matter how much imagination you throw at it. The Goal of an RPG is not for the Gamemaster to tell this amazing story that the players sit back and watch in passive awe, or roll dice on command. (Which is exactly what the D&D adaption of Diablo IS). The Gamemaster's single job is to create an engaging game world that the players can then, _tell_ _their_ _own_ _stories_ _through_ . That's it, that's all that matters. A Real Roleplaying game does not need Books, Maps, Dice or anything of the sort. The only requirement is Imagination. Argue with Electronic Arts if you disagree. In 'Mass Effect 3', they made a Gameplay Option to Turn Roleplaying off. Regardless of the implicit insanity in that (Like turning off Driving in a Driving game), it also reveals how utterly shallow the 'Roleplaying' had gotten in the franchise by then... But that's another issue.

2023 was a booty year for gaming🤢

Great video my friend. I played this on a powerbook 2400c at 320 x 240 and 15-20 fps. I still loved it.

I need to go back and finish it! Thanks for the reminder 😂

Dude they basically can't leave. Ogden talks about it in the very first dialogue of the game, where he mentions the dark riders.

I'm a big fan of stealth games, westerns and STALKER, so my girlfriend got me Blood West as a gift. I REALLY enjoyed this game! The stealth may be rudimentary in terms of mechanics, but it does exactly what older stealth titles did right (for my personal preference, of course): you want to use stealth because the combat is hard as hell. I love Dishonored, but stealth in Dishonored is more of a challenge run, as Corvo is extremely overpowered. I think Blood West was indeed my favorite game of 2023 as well. I agree with you on the sound design. It's the best I've seen in a long while. I could probably just stand there in place shooting at nothing for hours on end just to listen to the sounds of the guns.

I got in on the early access to this game as soon as I heard about it. Granted, it was because of Hunt: Showdown. I heard about this cool sounding wild west game with supernatural monsters, but that had the unfortunate requirement of other people being present and bringing down the gameplay experience. When I was looking into possible ways to play Hunt: Showdown without said other people, I stumbled upon Blood West. And I have enjoyed the hell out of it ever since.

All the best!

Thanks for covering Blood West! Had my eye on this for more than a year. After your analysis it's a no-brainer. Exploration and atmosphere are two of the most important criteria these days for me. Peace man!

It's a fantastic game! I played the entire thing and loved it. I was sad when it ended. It also oddly had a King's Field feel to it.

If it comes to PS5 I’ll get it!

vocab words i learned from diablo 1 at age 11: catacomb claymore succubus

the only problem i always had was the SLOOOOW movement speed.

Diablo 1 shall be played by anyone who loves arpgs. As it has an excellent atmosphere.

As always, an excellent analysis video. You really surpassed yourself on the writing of this one. Now I want to play it.

How come we never have arms when we use pistols in modern games..? You can clearly see the guy's arms with his ax.. and yet somehow when he aims the pistol, he even has less arms? Can we can we just like.. can we have our arms back in video games? Like consistently at least? Like.. Even inspector gadget has normal arms before he has even longer arms, and quato.. I mean yeah.. But I feel like you you should come up with an explanation for why your quato, and specifically with the pistols? Like we don't get to do basic modding on video games anymore, so I can't just give this guy his arms back and make it look like I'm doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing in the game.. But like.. as a developer.. like like have you ever held held a squirt gun or something? And if you're holding it like your protagonists hold it.. I highly recommend you do not fire a real firearm! Because you will hurt yourself! I mean I wouldn't even fire a cap gun with it up to my face like that.. I guess depending on the cap gun I suppose.. But like it's not like the view model is small that close, you're not like saving screen real estate.. and you know, a video game starring that guy from American horror story would definitely be interesting and I'm not opposed to that but clearly, that is not the case here as we have evidence that arms exist.. I don't want to get props on that overhead ax swing, it's it's good animation and I appreciate that which is really really really really really surprisingly uncommon especially with boomer shooters or shooters emulating the style of.. I'm not really sure because.. games had texture filtering at that point of 3D Fidelity.. But like.. you know credit where it is due, that's definitely a win, even if it's a little confusing where the arms go when he's not swinging, but understandable that they might be bent.. unlike with the pistol, where you're probably going to lose your eye if you shoot like that.

I really wanted JFJ to play this, I thought it'd be his cup of tea. But back to me, I love this game! So spooky and fun to play, love the going for an gun build and melee! Can't wait for the dlc coming soon!!!

Absolutely fantastic video, man. I need to hop back in.

It’s so good to see games like this using old school engines and graphics. It clearly shows the superiority of game design and atmosphere over graphics. And I prefer it. Hell, I’ve been playing Ultima Online Outlands and it’s literally one of the oldest mmos ever. But when I randomly came across a video of it and the graphics looked so much like Diablo and the old Army Men games, oh I was hooked. It’s the best. 7:20 another hallmark of old school fpss. Hidden loot and secret areas. Man, more games need to go back to this! No handholding or anything, you look for the odd crack in the rocks or you’ll miss out on goodies. This looks like a gem. Edit: 11:32 ah it’s not an old school fps without a real good sense of culture 😂 Perfect

Great video!

Would love to see a video from you on PR and consumer criticism. Good work btw. One of your best videos. You always totally sell me on a game. I will be playing all these games when my kids get older and I get my time back

Looks like a blast

Great Video! I bought the game but then forgot about the game. I love this video tribute to how special and great this game is. Thanks for the reminder, I need to revisit this awesome game. 👍👍

speaking of stalker, it's almost time brothers...

45 mins video length and no mention of Hunt showdown, this game's inspiration? tsk tsk , blood west has been described as the single player campaign for hunt showdown

i gave up on this game in the swamps. I dont like swamps, i gave up on dungeon siege swamps because they were too big and with too many enemies. In most immersive sims you start weak but become really powerful, eg deus ex and system shock 2. In this game you start even weaker and in every chapter the game becomes much harder and feels like you are not making progress. I might sound like i hated the game or something but no, i enjoyed the entire first map, then i gave up in the second because there too many enemies everywhere and i decided to get to the objective but got lost and i ended up in some base that had a massive underground complex of caves, it was at this point that i realized that the game has too much padding probably to have enough enemies to do so you can upgrade. The best immersive sims have top notch level design and no padding. Other things that annoyed me was the inventory system that they changed in updates and how inaccurate the guns are. I defended this by saying its suppose to be a stealth game, but another youtuber pointed out that defending a boomer shooter in the wild west for having terrible gunplay is stupid and we deserve better. Well yeah, its true, the game is too slow with crappy combat, you have to sneak everywhere slowly crouched like alien isolation, it takes too long to upgrade and make money and too many enemies and areas to explore. I played the game once, i enjoyed it, it got too tiresome and i got caught in other games, same thing happened with the outer wilds, i should get back to it at some point, when the new dlc comes out i will play blood west again, but now i got too many oldschool shooters to play, kvark, anomalous, forgive me father 2, killing time, zortch, carnal, bears in space, devilated. I will give it another shot when the dlc is out but i am honestly tired of the slow grind that you have to crawl around for 40 hours in these kind of games.

I agree that it’s a great game! But uh… I did actually cover it when I was working as a games journalist! XD It was one of the titles featured on (the now sadly defunct) Boss Level Gamer’s “It Came From… The Backlog!” Weekly stream. Was really impressed by it! As for other places covering it, I recall PCG and Kotaku giving it a word of mouth here or there. Often, the staff of your average site would much rather cover stuff like this than the latest pointless Fortnite update, but the ad revenue based model of keeping sites funded demands clicks over quality, sadly. It’s part of why I got out of that line of work.

comment for the algorymth. algorium. althgorithm. enojyable video.

Earned a subscriber. Amazing content mate

I love the Thief 1& 2 and also Stalker influences but the skill tree misses the point of these influences. Simplicity is king and this game overcomplicates the core mechanics. A near miss but a miss all the same sadly.

Splinter Cell Chaos Theory did it ages ago and I don't know why it hasn't become an industry standard in stealth games. You *need* a noise meter so you can judge whether you're gonna be able to sneak up on someone or not.

42:20 I can't help but roll my eyes at this. AAA games are consisted of over 100 employees from a variety of backgrounds, of course a few of them would be rude to rude customers. Not to mention that they're just as passionate as indie devs too and they try their hardest to innovative with minimal reward. You should listen to dev diaries. If they wanted easy money then they would make ai gen mobile games

You've sold me, I'll be looking for this. My question for you regards the levels. Are they too wide open and empty? In here I got old school vibes like Blood or Shadow Warrior where you're roaming for ages between things to do. Are they too wide open and empty? Did you feel they were done well enough?

You super glazin with this one

i cant help myself, but those were cicadas, not crickets. thank you for suffering this autistic pedantry.

I had a blast with this game and they got a DLC coming. I'd check out their other games too <3

It's almost a joke to me when gaming now is compared to gaming back in the late 90s or early 2000s. Far more games, but the gape in quality, creativity, sincerity is enormous. It's a business now, not something still being innovated or experimented with. I think they say "the best year' every year now when it was something understood looking back in the past because studios were doing what they did best or taking chances and finding success more than failure.

Man, you make the most excellent long form videos, sir.

Before I watch the rest of the video... I don't like how it's called "thief with guns". Thief's stealth wasn't there to allow for assassinations, it was there to AVOID combat. That's the problem with most modern "stealth" games, like Dishonored, for example. Their stealth is a way to show mercy to your opponents because you are so overpowered. So far, besides a reliable stealth and detection system (which, let's be honest, should be an expected feature of any game, that allows for stealth gameplay) I don't see any Thief in the game. I hope I'm proven wrong. Okay, I have watched the rest of the video. This game has very little to do with Thief. I'd say it's a hybrid between Stalker, Bethesda games, and Sniper Elite, just with a better (read: actually working) stealth system.

great video mate. thank for the shout out!!!

1:25 You are mistaken, my good sir. I bought the game after seeing @thesummerofmark's review. I did 2 playthroughs. It's a fantastic game. Really enjoyed my time. I am patiently waiting for the DLC: Dead Man's Promise and to do a 3rd playthrough. Maybe they'll release it before Christmas. That would be cool. The devs are friendly and helpful. I had a weird bug and got stuck in No Man's Land (out of bonds) after delivering the final blow to the 2nd act boss using an axe. I've emailed the devs my save and they sent a fixed save the next day, while also releasing a patch for that bug that week.

Superb video. Whenever someone asks me about Blood West, this is the video I'll be sending them. Also, thank you for enjoying one of the characters I voiced, the Undead (white hair bone cowboy)! ❤ Super glad to be noticed even among the heavy hitters such as Stephen, Redd & Gianni.

Parr was dropped for many reasons, one of the bigger ones being a massive piece of shit, not to mention his utter lack of professionalism. He's a horrible fucking person, and I know some people in Hyperstrange being embarrassed his name got associated with us in the first place.

Just the fact that this game is weird west makes it a must play imo. Good genre and one which is almost certainly going to be less familiar to most gamers, so it's enriching.

This game seems to have been buried. You don't see, or hear, much of it. It's a great game. Would love to see a sequel.