Cowboy games – they’re not as popular as you’d think. Rockstar gave us some of the best Western games and it feels like a lot of other developers barred the shutters and hid away inside. Still, there are some brilliant games for virtual gunslingers if you know where to look.
Set your clock to high noon and let’s dive in.
Weird West
Weird West is full of all manner of supernatural oddities, but it’s nothing your iron can’t fix. It starts as a traditional Western revenge story and quickly morphs into something strange. Before you know it, you’re robbing banks as a pigman and fighting off flesh-hungry zombies. Whether you’re fanning the hammer or cowboy booting someone through a window, Weird West is a rootin’, tootin’ good time.
Call of Juarez: Gunslinger
A first-person shooter, Gunslinger places you in the role of a bounty hunter and sets you loose across saloons and boneyards to track down a gaggle of outlaws. It’s frantic and brutal, like a kind of Call of Duty game with dynamite and revolvers.
West of Loathing
This is the great thing about cowboy games: Weird West and Gunslinger are completely different experiences, and West of Loathing is another oddity. You’re a stick-man cowboy who has to battle bovine bruisers. Forget packing a double-barrelled shotgun, just punch the stick cows in their stupid stick faces.
Blood West
Blood West has the gunplay of Doom and the options of Deus Ex, set within a supernatural Wild West. Don’t get put off by its retro graphical style – it’s atmospheric, tense, and sometimes terrifying. Whether you sneak or go in guns blazing is up to you.
Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath
Look, only the developers of these games know why they have to make them so weird. There’s just something in the well water. Stranger’s Wrath is an FPS set in the same world as Abe’s Oddysey, and it swaps out shotgun slugs for guns that fire actual slugs.
Hunt: Showdown
Similar to Escape from Tarkov, Hunt: Showdown is an extraction shooter. A handful of teams spawn on a map and they’re tasked with killing boss monsters before extracting the bounty. The only problem is, all the other players want that bounty too. There are few games as tense as this, a shooter where stepping on glass shards could see your head blown off by a bolt action rifle.
Fallout: New Vegas
Ignore the super mutants and the fact it’s set in a post-apocalyptic Vegas. Instead, look at the tumbleweeds. Look at the story, which sees you left to die in a shallow grave before heading out to seek revenge. Look at the dusty shacks and rusty firearms. Fallout: New Vegas is a cowboy game, and an amazing one at that.
Red Dead Redemption 2
The cowboy game to end all cowboy games, Red Dead Redemption 2 is a masterpiece full of homages to spaghetti Westerns. As well as nailing the action of the cowboy movie – shooting guys so they topple over railings never gets old – it also captures the serenity of this untamed landscape. Galloping across the wilderness feels like therapy.
Hard West
Cowboys and the supernatural go together like lemon and fish, and that supernatural zest is what makes Hard West such a fun experience. If you’ve played XCOM or anything like it, Hard West is basically a magical cowboy version of that. Turn-based tactics done right.
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