While each map is relatively small, there’s plenty of options when it comes to strategy, enabling you a refreshing sense of freedom when it comes to overcoming each danger-filled encounter. You can take cover, and use scenery to outflank enemies or elevation to provide overwatch.
It’s a turn-based setup, with each character assigned a series of action points. When combat finally kicks in, it’s your classic 'tactics' affair with saloons and stations just some of the locations you’ll be battling through. You can then spend this money on better mining equipment and potentially loot even more cash, or you head to the local town and buy new weapons, ammo and supplies.
You only have a select number of goes before your licence runs out, and each attempt costs you money in the hope you'll get a larger return in gold. For instance, the opening section of the game places you in the shoes of a father and son attempting to survive by mining for gold. While you're resigned to moving a cursor around a map and making a series of choices based on some on-screen text, there's still plenty of strategy required. There's an intriguing economy that exists between combat scenarios and overworld exploration. An injured or hungry sharpshooter will be less accurate in battle, increasing the chance of them leaving this mortal coil. These encounters are purposefully limited, but their effects carry into the rest of the game. Some encounters will follow a series of dialogue and action-based choices, leading to your gaining some loot or getting injured before moseying onto the next encounter. You’ll explore a territory map, guiding your posse into all manner of Western folk into a series of main and side missions. Each one is broken down into scenarios, with combat represented by an isometric view not too dissimilar to the XCOM games or the recent Achtung! Cthulhu Tactics on Switch.
Gameplay is divided between two distinct perspectives you'll explore an overworld in a choose-your-own-adventure format where each decision you make can have both positive and considerably negative outcomes on the flow of the story. While much of its world-building is delivered via on-screen text and sketched animations, you'll find yourself investing plenty of time and emotion into the lives and deaths of your posse of outlaws. Thanks to some excellent voice acting and a soundtrack that captures a unique take on this formative period (courtesy of Marcin Przybyłowicz, he of The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt fame), this narrative-driven, consequence-ridden experience takes two very different thematic sources and blends them both without diluting either.
CNBC's Emma Newburger contributed to this report.If there's one thing Hard West absolutely nails, it's the way it retains the palpable danger and lawlessness of the Wild West and infuses it with a noir-ish supernatural edge. "In the day or two ahead, we could start to see products running low or completely out in some of these affected regions," he said. "Perhaps the federal government doesn't yet think that that is necessary."Īnalysts from RBC Capital Markets said in a note that the East Coast could draw down inventories, rely on other districts, or increase gasoline imports - but these options would lead to higher energy prices.Īs the outage continues, the situation could become more severe as time is running out, De Haan said. "I would think that that could happen relatively soon, but again that may offer detail on where the situation is going," he said. ports to be carried on ships that are built, owned and operated by U.S. However, the government would need to waive the Jones Act, which requires trade between U.S. Barges may be a "good alternative" way to transport refined products to other parts of the U.S., said De Haan.