Hard West 2 Preview – Tactical Gunfights
Hard West 2 begins with the quintessential Wild West-style heist: hijacking a moving steam train while on horseback, set in winding dirt roads amidst sprawling mountain ranges. Your posse of outlaws look for opportunities to leap onto the locomotive, guns and fists at the ready. Within minutes, gun-toting cowboys swarm into the carriage, unloading clips of bullets against your incursion while crouched behind the safety of barrels, crates and walls. But with a few well-placed gunshots and strategic manoeuvring, the guards were downed and the outlaws emerged victorious. It was sublime; the battle soon became an irresistible and exhilarating display of smooth gunslinging and dizzying shoot-outs.
Like its predecessor, Hard West 2 is all about tactical combat and turn-based gunfights in the vein of XCOM, but not nearly as bleak, without the disposable soldiers, and imbued with a touch of the occult. As Gin Carter, you’re the leader of this merry band of outlaws who has somehow crossed paths with the literal devil—turns out the train that they were hijacking happened to be driven by this charismatic fellow, who decided to make them an offer they cannot really refuse. The outlaws, of course, got the short end of the stick, which makes up the impetus for the rest of their gunslinging journey: to point a double-barrelled shotgun right in the face of the smug devil. Trading the dusty, sweltering heat of the desert for the piercing cold air of the mountains, Hard West 2 would see this crew traverse through the snow, visiting various towns, mining tunnels and other locations—at least in the game’s beta for now—with their travels interspersed by gunfights and hostile encounters with cowboys and otherworldly beings.
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