Wild Wild West is one of the most infamous Will Smith films. It shows the Wild West in a crooked mirror, unfortunately the level of absurdity is so high that it becomes distasteful. This perfectly reflects the nature of the game discussed today.
When I saw the Ritual: Crown of Horns gameplay for the first time, I had fond memories from my childhood, when I played various types of shoot’em ups like Alien Swarma . That’s why I was looking forward to a nice, fast gameplay with a lot of weapons, power-ups and hordes of different opponents with unique properties. Everything for this was to be poured with the atmosphere of spaghetti westerns and a hint of horror resulting from the dark plot. It quickly turned out, however, that the game fails on practically every line, which effectively takes away the pleasure of the game.
Deer rule the world
The player is thrown in the middle of the events from the very beginning. In the game we play the role of Daniel Goodchild – one of the most famous and strong witch hunters in the Wild West. He has just received a task directly from the American government to kill one of the witches who practice magic. However, when a confrontation occurs, he is attacked by mysterious people wearing deer antlers. As a result of the ambush, he dies, but in the afterlife he has the opportunity to meet the witch who was his target. They have a brief conversation which shows that the cultists are under the authority of the US President. The so far patriotic Daniel decides to take revenge, and to achieve his goal, he cooperates with a witch who resurrects him using her powers. This is how the hero’s bloody crusade begins.
And, unfortunately, the first problems of the game appear here. Since starting the production, I had a lot to complain about the way the story is conducted – on the one hand it tries to be atmospheric thanks to the music and graphic style, on the other hand, the dialogues are written in a terrible way. If they push the plot forward, it is a pure exposition that reveals nothing about the characters and their characters, which makes them read more like a summary of the story, which is tiring in the long run. When there is some looser dialogue – usually between levels – it is full of texts taken straight from the fan fiction of a rebellious teenager. Ultimately, this led to me skipping a lot of them because they were just tiring. Some of them, however, stalk the player all the time, because each time at the beginning of the level, the hero throws them a liner, which is to show how cool he is. Unfortunately, it turned out badly, because texts like “My name is Daniel, but you can call me AMEN” or “Shoot the living, spit on the dead” will not make me feel like my character.
Shooting while you wait
However, shoot’em upach was never about an addictive and complicated story, but about a nice and eye-catching gameplay. Initially, it looked like the game would not fail in this aspect. Although the controls seem a bit unnatural and often unintuitive, it can be forgiven, because killing hordes of enemies gives satisfaction … for the first two or three boards. Unfortunately, each subsequent mission follows exactly the same pattern – survive for X times while protecting the witch who performs the ritual. It would not be that problematic if it were not for the fact that we have a very limited choice of weapons. And there are even fewer of those that are suitable for regular use. In fact, I spent most of my time using the stock revolver, sometimes helping myself with the crossbow. The structure of the levels itself does not help either – usually there are several paths leading to the starting point, which are far enough from each other that you cannot see the rest of the map. Due to the lack of access to the minimap indicating the enemies, we have practically no control over it. This is a huge problem because the enemies appear almost randomly. And this is another serious drawback – I often had to go through one map several times, until finally the RNG arranged so that the board was just easier than before.
The level design itself also leaves a lot to be desired. Usually they look the same – in the middle there is a building in which the witch is staying, there are several paths around the opponents. Sometimes, new mechanics are introduced to diversify the fun. The problem is that they usually only appear once and are not fully explained. For this reason, one board caused me a lot of problems, because it turned out that the teleports had to be entered at the right angle, which I found out by a complete accident. Fortunately, each map can be walked in about 3-5 minutes, because that’s what we usually have to survive, which is perfect for short meetings, e.g. in the queue or public transport … But even this aspect has been made quite difficult by the long loading times of maps which, frankly speaking, shocks me.
A missed shot
Unfortunately, I have to include Ritual: Crown of Horns as my second biggest gaming profession this year. As a fan of short meeting games, conspiracy theories and the vibe of Clint Eastwood westerns, I expected to get something that would suit my taste perfectly. However, poor decisions in designing the game made me bounce off her and had to force myself to play more sessions with her. The title takes only 3-4 hours for the price of PLN 72 – for this money you can find much more interesting and longer productions.
