033PREVIEW
I’d forget about it a bit longer until they said ‘Yeah,
we’ve got him. He’s in.’ So that was fantastic!”
As you explore each randomised room in
Purgatory (Wyoming), unknown horrors lurk in every
poorly lit corner. If you can get to a lantern, you can
light things up with r, temporarily stunning nearby
monsters. Pelting towards a dim lantern, glimpsing
a ripple of sinew in the dark, we experience the
magical moment the art style is aimed at evoking.
During our hands-on, lighting lanterns becomes a
reflex, as getting caught by the ghoulies is a hard
lesson that only bears repeating a handful of times.
Langridge says, “Something that we want to do is
pull people into the centre of a room even if it looks
scary, so that they can get surrounded a little bit
more, rather than [...] take pot shots from the corner
[...] and the lanterns turned out to be quite a nice
way of doing that. So you’ll see this scary dark room
and there’s a bit of bait in the middle [...] [The light
stunning] the creatures gives you a bit of a chance to
think and then you can start shooting.”
Going in with a vague plan is helpful, but the
ability to improvise is key to survival. Enemies can
destroy cover, which regenerates after a while. You’ll
need to hunker down to speed up your automatic
reload but you can’t just sit and wait either. Facing
off against the first boss, seeing him diving in and
out of cover, lobbing explosives, not to
mention all the other ways he draws from
the same intelligent bag of tricks as us,
drives home the point that it doesn’t hurt
to be adaptable.RUN AND GUN
Your two guns are assigned to i and
p, aiding the fantasy of dual-wielding.
Abilities, of which you can also equip
two at a time, can be popped off via u
and o. Swarmed by enemies en route to
the next lantern, we hurl a grenade at the
approaching horde before diving over cover
and making a break for the next passageway.
Most average grunts won’t give chase but
we encounter some especially beefy boys
towards the end of our hands-on that are slow but
always steadily advancing.
Now, this is a roguelike so you can’t carry over
pickups like guns and abilities – of which there are
a lot – between runs. Throughout Purgatory, there
are places where you can channel the life force of
enemies you’ve blasted into next week into stat
upgrades. Reaching the end of a level finalises these
changes so you can carry forward, say, your obscene
amount of health into future runs. Let’s just say as
we go from slow-moving zombies to dogs, we’re glad
to have that cushion of hit points.
(What is it about videogame dogs that makes
them either the best or the absolute worst?)
Anyway, after peeking into a room only to see
three dogs sniffing around, we decide to explore a
different, procedurally generated path – and try to
ignore the developers standing behind us, chortling.
Our reason for turning back isn’t just cowardice
(though that’s definitely part of it). We’re also
regretting our specialised shotgun loadout. While
every bit as powerful as you’d expect, shotguns are
slow and necessitate close-quarters combat that we’d
rather avoid for the time being. It’s worth exploring,
but we’d rather make our escape before becoming
demonic Fido’s new chew toy.FACTRICK
Ex-Bullfrog Productions
staffer Dene Carter is
in charge of writing
West Of Dead.- FRIENDLY FACES
Adam Langridge says
Carter is “just brilliant. He’s
made us dodge one or two
bullets in the story.”- ON TARGET
Ron Perlman’s no stranger
to videogames, most
recently voicing The
Speaker in Fallout 76.- HE’S A PERL
Above Stay on your guard! You never do know when you’ll bump into a mid-boss
like this. There’s no shame in running away.
Above Shotguns are short-ranged, but seeing someone scuffle
close enough for you to set your sights on ’em is so satisfying.
Above Don’t make our mistake and over-specialise. You’re
going to need a diverse armoury to succeed out west.
“WHAT IS IT ABOUT
VIDEOGAME DOGS
THAT MAKES THEM
EITHER THE BEST OR
THE VERY WORST?”