Every action, including movement, costs ability points. Taking on a combat challenges pulls you into that location but with top-down view. You progress through the campaign in sectioned off scenarios, each telling a piece of the larger story by navigating an overworld map and visiting locations with Choose Your Own Adventure style decision making. If travesty had made me a monster, why not live up to it?ДЄll of this feeds into the tactical heart of the game. Even with the minimalist storytelling and character building, the early scenarios did an excellent job of making me relate to Warren. This is a story of a good man on a bad run of luck (oddball cannibalism aside) where one terrible mistake turns his life upside down. Hard West accomplished what few games ever could: it made me want to be a monster. It wasnвЂ™t until later, when I had discovered more about the gameвЂ™s Boon Card system that it all came together.ДЇor all of that beginning strangeness, the gameвЂ™s atmosphere is just excellent. It makes sense from a gameplay standpoint but, thematically, it was strange to see good-guy Warren kneel down and start tearing into the stomach of a downed enemy. This is Hard WestвЂ™s way of showing you whatвЂ™s in store before stripping all of your power away. Warren has the ability to cannibalize his enemies for extra health and summon demonic powers, while heвЂ™s still a run of the mill prospector. Hard West is fairly twisted, even before the supernatural stuff kicks in. ItвЂ™s not too much of a spoiler to say that this Warren meets a gruesome death, but isnвЂ™t content to stay that way, and rises again to punish his killers. Hard West carries the themes of its old west setting, but turns on a dime and becomes a tale of the occult and undead revenge.

In fact, if I could marry words to art, I would inextricably tie this gameвЂ™s title to the undead gunslinger currently gracing its cover art.

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