Westerado: Double Barreled

Warning: Some spoilers below.

The game starts you off with helping your brother wrangle some buffalo into the pen. One of the buffalo gets loose of the pen, so you run off to catch it. Upon returning, the ranch is up in flames. Your mother is dead, and your brother is dying. After some final words with your brother (whom gives you your first clue on what the murderer looked like), you are given free roam.

From here, you're free to do as you please. Help somebody out, or just shoot them. It's your decision, and there is no barriers to what you do, only consequences. Shoot a bandit leader before getting him to meet with your contact? Oh well, mission is failed. Shoot the wrong guy in Clintsville? Everybody wants your blood. It's a nice break from making important characters invincible.

With these missions, they can truly be complex. You'll get the option to help out the local Indians with freeing some buffalo. With releasing the buffalo, missions with these ranchers will disappear. alongside that, since Rancher Cobb doesn't have any way of paying for repairs on his ranch, he'll be forced to sell his property to the Oil Tycoon. Like I said, consequences.

In terms of combat, you have 5 weapons to choose from. The starting weapon: a singular revolver, dual revolvers, a double-barreled shotgun, a rifle, and a tomahawk. The character and all NPCs can only shoot left or right, and the bullet/tomahawk only travels along the latitude it's facing. With this restriction, it makes combat a little difficult. It also makes for interesting strategies. In my playthrough, I used the 1 revolver, and bought the rifle. With the rifle, it can hit multiple people along the bullet trajectory. So clearing out mines/ghost towns became much easier if lined up correctly.

When you start out in the game, there is only the younger brother as a playable character. As you complete quest lines, 3 more characters become available to start new playthroughs. Completing the main quest will reward you with the older brother as a playable character. He starts with both a singular revolver and dual revolvers. He comes at the risk of having only one life, so the game will be much harder. Playing through the train quest line will unlock your sister as a playable character. She carries a singular revolver and a shotgun. Finally, helping the indians out through their questline will unlock a indian brother. He starts out with a tomahawk. After trying out all the characters, I prefer to play as the sister. Her model is unique looking (so easier to pick out of a frantic gunfight), and the spray on the shotgun is short, but covers a bunch of ground in it's area.

With my playthrough, it took me about 2 hours to find my murderer. Alongside finding him, I managed to save up money for the house available, "made hats" with Miss Tress, and killed over a hundred bandits. Although the combat can be slightly annoying, and the game is fairly short to complete, I'd say it's worth it for 15 USD. There is enough to do in the game to have multiple playthroughs, even just for the whodunnit portion of the game.