The Western genre is oddly under-represented in the video game sphere, despite being such a major cultural touchstone in other media - movies and TV especially. However, there was one very important cowboy game that came out fairly recently that was packed to the gills with historical realism and an evident fond appreciation of that once-ubiquitous thematic genre, ensuring that cowboy games would continue strong for another console generation at least. That game was, of course, West of Loathing from Asymmetric Publications.

Riffing on the inherent ridiculousness of the wild west in much the same way Blazing Saddles did many years before, West of Loathing parlays the popularity of Asymmetric's more fantasy-ish focused browser-based MMORPG Kingdom of Loathing in a brand new rootin'-est, tootin'-est direction, albeit with many elements of the original game: the simple RPG combat system that demands a certain mastery over buffs and debuffs to win its internecine battles; a pervasive sense of humor that can be both broad and hopelessly esoteric; a strange obsession with meat as the world's currency, where it is a fungible and non-perishable commodity that is mined from ore veins as often as it is recovered from animal carcasses; and, most strikingly, a certain visual minimalism that renders the world in stark black and white lines and its people as stick figures wearing neutral expressions with only silly hats to distinguish them. As an unrepentant carnivore with a predilection for dumb puns and drawing stick people on occasion, I felt right at home here.

West of Loathing also builds on its predecessor's structure, as a loosely-defined open-world online RPG. West of Loathing drops the online aspect - no meeting other players on the trail, which I at least am thankful for - but you'll often be crossing the map for one objective only to bump into a random encounter that might generate an entire new side-quest or location to visit. In that sense, it's very much like the old Fallout games: often you have a clear objective in mind, but a sudden discovery while traversing the world map might waylay you towards a distraction or two, from which you could earn more XP or some better items or just be privy to a silly joke or movie reference that the designers left there for you to find. In that spirit of fun, the game is extremely lenient when it comes to dying and the like: if you lose a fight, you get "angry" - a perk that conveys some decent stat boosts - and can then retry the battle you just narrowly lost with this new boon, in a manner similar to how Bugs Bunny might be thrown from one of those melee dust clouds, fix his hat, and march back in with a determined look. Or you can take the loss and decide to come back later when you're a little better prepared. Losing too many fights will cause you to pass out from your own ire, waking up back in the hub town of Dirtwater the next day with all your 24-hour buffs removed - deservedly annoying, but certainly not deleterious to the playthrough.

Likewise, West of Loathing's turn-based combat takes after the simplicity of Kingdom of Loathing where you have three chief stats determining damage - here it's Moxie for gunfighting, Muscle for hand-to-hand melee, and Mysticism for "bean magic" - and enemies will regularly attack you with whichever stat of theirs is highest. It becomes a game of damage mitigation and target prioritization, as you quickly eliminate the biggest threats with your big-hitters and use what resources you have left to stay in the fight long enough to take out the rest. You have a limited amount of "AP" (action points) per battle to use on skills, but it always recovers in full by the next encounter so it's worth using them up if it can whittle down a crowd of enemies faster. I picked a Snake Oiler for my class: in addition to being an expert Hornswoggler (a miscellaneous skill that opens new dialogue options), they can use their knowledge of snakes and snake oils to create effective poisons and tonics and a lot of those poison debuffs can be devastating when used early in a long fight, especially when you consider that they can be stacked. West of Loathing's combat therefore is both very straightforward - enemies only ever seem to attack you in one way, and always with the same damage numbers unless you figure out how to reduce them - and remarkably tactical at the same time.

It's worth reiterating that West of Loathing is an inveterate and relentless jokester, tossing bon mots and goofy puns your way every other second. To the game's credit, it's not only extremely funny - in my view at least, though anyone who's had to deal with my BS in the Giant Bomb chat knows to take a grain of salt there - but the types of humor it employs vary considerably, from an ongoing routine where you reach into spittoons for valuable items despite the narrator's undisguised revulsion to dialogue trees where you intelligently but also stupidly use the world's own Looney Tunes logic against it. Yet in spite of the game's very deliberate foolishness, there's a great deal of clever quality-of-life features working behind the scenes to ensure the players are having a ball exploring this ludicrous version of the wild west. These range from the above minimized battle loss conditions to the way your "pardner" helps out in combat, always has advice to offer, and will list all your main and side-quest objectives in case you forgot. There's much you'll want to keep track of elsewhere via a notepad and pen perhaps, in particular with regards to locked chests you've left behind or items you need to finish off an area or quest, but the game's pretty decent about surfacing all you need to know. If you're ever feeling under-levelled or need specific monster drops, there's a number of places where you can generate as many encounters with specific foes as you could want: for example there's an early location called the Daveyard, where various Daves are buried, that can produce an endless number of battles with one or three undead Daves if you require their skeletal remains for a side-quest or just need a few more XP to push you over the next target.

Overall, West of Loathing has been a joy to play so far, and while it might not be much to look at it's full of character and great comedic writing. It emphasizes everything I appreciate about turn-based and open-world RPG design and it's even making the Western genre endearing to me, which might be a first. I look forward to playing more of it after this review goes up and seeing how much more hornswogglin' and dickerin' I can get away with.

Rating: 5 out of 5.