The Golden Years: Way Out West is a highly polished and enjoyable time management game set in – you guessed it – the Wild West. You play Gertrude, a woman whose husband was put in prison by an evil businessman who loaned him money to buy a store which then burned down – and along with her son, Gertrude sets out to make her fortune and pay off her husband’s debt. Along the way she will find some who help her, while corruption and greed block her path at every turn… From the detailed cartoony graphics, nice little animations, suitable and listenable music and high quality voice acting, this game’s production values are high throughout. There are a couple of small bugs – one line of dialogue is voiced by the wrong character, and one or two bits of descriptive text were inaccurate – but there were certainly no gamestoppers. The game’s interface works very smoothly and the tutorial works well without being too intrusive. There are 48 levels in total, and the game introduces new elements to control on a frequent basis, helping to keep thing interesting. Instead of just setting you a goal for each level, as in Rescue Team 2 , The Golden Years: Way Out West gives you a series of objectives – from 2 to 6 per level – with a time limit for each. Completing each level is pretty easy, but slightly more challenging is to do it with a rating of “Expert”, which gives you an upgrade point to repair a ruined old train and carriage that you have been given. I really liked this aspect of the game, but getting an Expert rating is far too easy – I got it first time round probably 40 out of the 48 levels, with maybe 2 levels requiring more than one restart. The reason for this is that most often you only need to achieve half the number of goals before their respective timers run out to be called “Expert” – this was fine in itself, but there should have been another, higher rating if you managed to complete the level with every checkpoint completed. Since sometimes all you need to do to complete a checkpoint is go and talk to someone – effectively a single mouse click – there wasn’t any real challenge getting an Expert rating on every level. The story that drives the game is solid and nicely told – of a woman who was done wrong, and who wasn’t going to let anything stop her. It’s a completely family-friendly game but manages to get a little social satire in on one level (“greed and corruption is going to ruin this country!”). Overall The Golden Years: Way Out West is a really nice game, well produced and a joy to play, but the lack of challenge is a pretty major concern if you’re not a casual games player. Each level takes a few minutes to complete, some you may need to try more than once, I’d estimate this will take around 6 hours to complete give or take an hour (maybe two). The Golden Years: Way Out West Website Demo Download PC Game Reviews and News
Read the original:
PC Game Review – The Golden Years: Way Out West
Recent Comments