West of Dead is a really fun game. It's a cover-based twin-stick shooter, so there's a top-down view and you crouch behind cover in between shooting bad guys. It's also a roguelike, so you get random weapons each run and unlock permanent perks with the currency you collect. I'm typically terrible at roguelikes but I fell in love with this one and actually beat it.
Here's a trailer. You can get it on Steam, Switch, Xbox, Playstation, wherever.
Typically, the Weird West genre is comprised of pulp novels and fairly mindless action movies. It's hard to take the genre too seriously when the premises are so ridiculous. But Cold As Hell does an amazing job of crafting fully-realized characters in a complex world. Yes, this is a story about an undead gunslinger trying to take down necromancers, vampires, and werewolves, but the authors treat it all with respect.
The main character is a relatively moral person who joined a gang in his youth. The gang started becoming more violent and brutal so the main character started to have doubts. And his gang murdered him for it. But an angel resurrects him and makes him a Hand of God, tasked with hunting down creatures cursed by hell.
One interesting aspect of this is his body heals extremely quickly and he feels no pain. So he can get shot multiple times and as long as his muscles and tendons are still attached, he can keep fighting. But this also means he's numb to the world. He can't get drunk, he can't feel a kiss, he can't indulge in any vices. So while he's able to continue walking the earth, he can't really do anything to make his time enjoyable. He isn't happy being a Hand of God.
Also, not every cursed creature is evil. There are werewolves who are just trying to lay low and stay out of everyone's way. And the main character doesn't like indiscriminately killing every cursed creature, which pisses off his angel handler. So the series isn't just a bunch of "go kill the bad guy" stories, there's a lot of nuance involved.
There are 2 books in the series so far, with a third planned for next year. Also, there's a 3.5-hour audible-exclusive prequel called Dead Acre which is narrated by Roger Clark (who voiced Arthur Morgan in Red Dead Redemption 2). I highly recommend the whole series.
I was so excited when I learned of the existence of GallowWalkers. Wesley Snipes playing a vampire gunslinger in the Wild West? Sounds like it could actually scratch my itch for more Darkwatch!
But no, this movie is terrible. While I definitely went in with too high of expectations, this is a bad movie even with low expectations. My primary issue is the pacing; the movie is simply boring. I can handle bad writing and bad acting but I can't handle one boring scene after another. Such a shame.
Here's a trailer. And of course, being a bad movie, it's available for streaming everywhere! Tubi, Pluto, Roku, Amazon Prime/Freevee, anywhere you want!
I'm going to kick-start this community with my favorite Weird West work. Darkwatch had everything I wanted from a Weird Western: a vampire gunslinger shooting monsters at night. Sure, the gameplay could've been better (a lot better) but the world-building was so fun I loved it anyway.
I don't know if I could handle playing the game again today; it got mediocre reviews even when it was released and the game mechanics are even more dated now. But I'll always have a soft-spot for it and would love a sequel in this world.
Here's a trailer showing just how ridiculous the game was.
