10 BEST WESTERN GAMES ON XBOX

TEN BEST WESTERN GAMES ON XBOX

With all the excitement around a certain new open-world Western game, we give a massive ‘yee-haa’ to the best Xbox games set in the Wild West. Move ’em on, head ’em up and ride ’em in… CHRIS BURKE

CALL OF JUAREZ: BOUND IN BLOOD Techland’s prequel to its 2006 FPS focused on two brothers, Ray and Thomas McCall, at the end of the American Civil War. Having left their posts to save their homes, they are labelled deserters, and go on the run before discovering the legend of the gold of Juarez. The game’s gritty Western authenticity combined with excellent shooting mechanics, with your character able to jump, crouch, kick stuff over and destroy a lot of the environment. The multiplayer wasn’t half bad, either. It’s also worth giving the nod to the series’ other games, like the original, Gunslinger and the modern-day Call Of Juarez: The Cartel, which brought the Western feel into a Narcos setting.

GUNFRIGHT Rare, or Ultimate as it used to be known, made this classic ZX Spectrum game back in the ’80s, with a gunslinger looking rather like Sabrewulf and Knight Lore’s Sabreman, except with a cowboy hat and revolver. You’re given Wanted bounties to chase down, in and out of Western buildings in glorious 8-bit graphics, and best of all is your hobbyhorse. Get on that bad boy and you race around town – which is useful because you’re on a time limit for bringing those banditos in. Catch up to your quarry and you go into a first person shoot-out where you have to land your shots using a moving reticule. Today it’s kinda ‘charming’, and it’s available on Rare Replay.

ODDWORLD: STRANGER’S WRATH After Oddworld Inhabitants’ Xbox launch exclusive Munch’s Oddysee in 2001, came this second exclusive. Ditching the series’ named protagonists, Abe and Munch, for a mysterious ‘stranger’, the team basically made a brilliant Western game. As a bounty hunter, your main aim was to round up wanted villains, dead or alive, and collect the bounties, or ‘Moolah’, which you needed for an operation. In a twist to the other games in this list, you fired ‘live ammo’. And when we say ‘live’, we mean it. The Stranger picked up insects and mammals and fired them from his crossbow. These unfortunate live creatures had different effects on enemies, like exploding, stunning or stinging. Well, it was an Oddworld game after all.

TIMESPLITTERS 2 This beloved shooter on the original Xbox had many memorable historical settings, such as gangster Chicago and Mexicana Old West, as the storyline saw you zipping in and out of time portals. The town of Little Prospect was particularly memorable, as you were dropped into the spurred heels of one Elijah Jones, and had to rescue maligned local law lady Ramona from jail, defeat the dastardly Colonel, rescue a cowgirl from a burning building and then escape back through the time portal again. The FPS action kept you on your toes as bad guys would shoot at you from windows and doorways. The West made for a great multiplayer map too, as you shot up your mates in dusty ol’ Me-hi-co.

WESTERADO A brilliantly fun pixel-based open-world Western adventure, in which you have to track down your family’s murderer via clues gleaned from folks you meet in towns and ranches. Help a fella out and they’ll lend a helping hand in building up a picture of the murderer (‘wide hat’, ‘bandana’ etc) so eventually you can pick them out from all the other pixel folk. Combat is unforgiving but satisfying. Load up your six-shooter bullet by bullet, press the right trigger first to cock and then to fire your pistol, so you have to be quick on the draw when you come across banditos. You can also play poker in the saloons to make some money to buy hats – the game’s life system. Get all three hats shot off, and it’s adios muchachos!

DEAD MAN’S HAND One of the first games to make use of Xbox Live, this FPS felt like really being a cowboy. This was before the West was won by Rockstar, of course, and Westerns were an underused but rich source of material for games to draw from. Before this, there’d been only a handful of notable Wild West arcade games, like Gun.Smoke or Iron Horse, but here was a game with more than a little visual flair and some nice touches, like playing poker between levels. Team deathmatch online was laggy, but it still gave you the chance to posse up with your pals. Via a ‘trick shot’ mechanic you could shoot hats off, and build up and fire-off a volley of shots from your trusty revolver, just like Clint Eastwood.

DARKWATCH Released in 2005 for the Xbox this shooter was a unique proposition at the time, mixing Westerns with horror. As half-vampire outlaw Jericho Cross, you’re out for revenge against the forces of darkness, as part of the titular monster-hunting organisation. Some impressive visuals and great gameplay were bolstered by the branching narrative based on your morality. Aside from a ton of steampunk weaponry you had powers like Blood Shield, a double vampire jump and Blood Vision, and other powers that were awarded based on the moral choices you made. There were even good and bad endings, depending on which of your companions you sided with: vampire temptress Tala or Darkwatch agent Cassidy.

RED DEAD REVOLVER Rockstar San Diego explored a new frontier that proved fertile. Players mostly took the role of bounty hunter Red Harlow, but sections of the game were played through the perspective of characters such as tough rancher Annie Stoakes, each with a story that tapped into Western movie tropes. Typical of Rockstar’s evolving idiom, the game was full of cartoon violence and funny dialogue, plus memorable and tough boss fights with brilliantly ludicrous villains like dynamite-loving Pig Josh, cow-loving Holstein Hal and cigar-loving showgirl Bad Bessie. Innovative gunfights featured the slo-mo ‘Deadeye’ system to give you the edge, while multiplayer had some great game modes like the High Noon gun duel, literally a 1-4 player quick-draw to the death.

GUN This sandbox Western was a launch title for the Xbox 360 and featured a story of vengeance in the 1880s, a third-person romp through Dodge City and other locations drawn from Wild West mythology. Some top-drawer Hollywood talent did the voiceovers too, including Kris Kristofferson, Thomas Jane, Ron Perlman, Lance Henriksen and Tom Skerrit. Gun attempted to depict the true grit of the West, and in doing so fell foul of the Association For American Indian Development, who were not too happy with all the Native American killing. Yes, the West wasn’t pretty, but the game itself, as you galloped across dusty deserts with fantastic vistas, sure was.

RED DEAD REDEMPTION

The gold standard of Western games. At least until the prequel comes out next month. John Marston’s truly epic tale of end-of-the-Wild-West redemption for a gunslinger just trying to make his way and protect his family in the new world is a classic on every level. Superior storytelling, fantastic third-person action and one of the biggest open-world sandboxes at the time, Marston’s journey across the Western American Frontier and Mexico was like a page-turner of a book; you couldn’t put it down and, since it’s beautifully remastered for 4K, it still holds up. The game’s multiplayer was a superior experience, too. Rockstar keeps putting out amazing, groundbreaking, genre-defining titles, and if RDR2 is everything we hope for, it really will be the last word in Western games.