Obvious comparisons will be drawn between 12 Is Better Than 6 [official site] and Hotline Miami – with its unrelenting, hedonistic disarray of bullets and blood and death, shot from the lofty heights of a bird’s eye view – yet it’s more than a Wild West-set duplicate. The top-down, “kill everyone” shooter has blasted its way out.
While Hotline Miami more often than not requires deft tactics to best its levels, there’s always scope to tear through them reliant solely on luck and ammunition. 12 Is Better Than 6 doesn’t allow such recklessness. For one, the bad guys don’t miss. Ever. Which means planning two, three and four moves ahead quickly becomes essential. So too does making each bullet count, as the game’s shooting mechanics dictate the need to re-cock your revolver after every shot fired. At first this frustrated me, but, after I got used to it, it felt right. The baddies may’ve been freakishly good at hunting me down, but it rarely felt unfair. If I cocked up and found myself splayed out on the dirt with hand drawn blood oozing from my gaping wounds, that was on me.
“Wield the authentic weaponry: revolvers, guns, bows, knives, pitchforks and even ordnance,” reads the blurb for the game that scraped through a successful Kickstarter campaign with some eleventh hour high drama (a bunch of backers pulled out at the last minute, dropping its goal below its ask that it eventually made back up). “Rob trains, protect the innocents, collude with Sheriffs, and eradicate the gangs … Step into the dirty, lawless and cruel world of the North America land, 1873.”
Hang on a minute, that’s the same year ol’ RPS was founded. There’s only one winner there, pardner.
12 Is Better Than 6 is out now on Steam for the discounted price of £5.94. Here’s its launch trailer:
22/11/2015 at 15:59 Beefenstein says:
Is this any good? I have my eye on it.
22/11/2015 at 16:07 Capt. Bumchum McMerryweather says:
The art style reminds me of the brilliant scene from the otherwise terrible 30 Days of Night. That aerial scene where the vamps are murderising everyone in the snow, with the blood spattering on the snow. Brilliant cinematography.
22/11/2015 at 16:52 ninjapirate says:
Now I’m actually hoping that there’s an editor that allows me to design maps that I can print and use for pen & paper RPG sessions.
22/11/2015 at 17:13 Earl-Grey says:
For a sliver of a second that header image tricked me into thinking you had decided to start posting Strafe Left again.
This is neat too though…but I wanted Strafe Left
link to rockpapershotgun.com
22/11/2015 at 17:44 Gap Gen says:
Yes, I thought that too.
23/11/2015 at 04:33 Arglebargle says:
Most cowboys were terrible shots. As someone once put it, ‘More cowboys died falling drunk off their horse, than ever got killed in a gunfight.’
23/11/2015 at 11:30 El Mariachi says:
The handgun technology of the time didn’t lend itself to accuracy at ranges over ~50′. Those honorable old west high noon shootouts paced off at 25 yards never happened, they were most often some asshole popping up from behind a barrel or trough and shooting you in the back point-blank.
23/11/2015 at 18:50 klops says:
Most cowboys lived in a world with colours.
23/11/2015 at 18:10 finc says:
‘Ask’ as a noun! Noooooooooo!