Let me preface this by saying that I do not hate this game, however I am quite astonished by the very positive reviews that it has.


I did like the game or rather the concept initially, but the mechanics that are clunky from the start never really grew on me. Add to this the weak story, minimal art design and repetitive nature of the gameplay and by the end I only wanted to get it over with.


Why did I not like the game?

• "Innovative" shooting technique. You need to ♥♥♥♥ the hammer before every shot with the revolver that you take. Now I am a competition shooter in real life and can appreciate the idea behind this, however to me it just feels incredibly forced behind a computer screen and in my 6 hours of playtime it never became natural. It was a little better with the lever action and the shotgun. It feels a lot better with the bow. Overall still the worst flaw of the game that may be a deal breaker for many.
  
• Unresponsiveness of the entire interface. You can and have to pick up different guns from fallen enemies frequently, even if only to loot their ammo (see below), however the game is really picky about where you stand in relation to the gun you want, how hard you have to press the button (e.g. how long you have to hold the button down before something happens etc.). Theoretically you should be able to pick up a new gun for your empty one during a firefight, but that is absolutely not possible. Same with reloads that sometimes do not wanna go through (especially the shotgun is very noticeable in that regard). You have no indication as to when your gun is ready to be fired again (there IS a delay especially when dual wielding or with the shotgun before you can fire again, but the interface shows the gun is loaded. The lever action when being reloaded changes the aiming reticle to a big animation of the mag being loaded that covers everything you might have been shooting at. Terrible design.
  
• Closely tied with the point above is the ammo management. This is absolutely no problem at the start of the game with the single revolver and the more methodical gameplay. Towards the end you will face a multitude of enemies and fights will get rather hectic. Then after the fight you will be running around, holding r above every enemy to empty your current gun, pick up the new gun and reload. And you will be doing that a lot. It just kills the pacing entirely and is tedious af.
  
• Enemy AI. What can I say, I did not expect to be fighting extremely sophisticated bots, but all you will see are braindead lemmings. Some levels are over in 20 seconds, because you shot once, wait behind a corner and literally every baddie in the level will come running around that one corner one after the other. That is simply no fun. Others are obviously programmed to sit in one place and aim at a corner. In any case there is absolutely no logic as to when the enemies hit and when they miss. Maybe it is all rng, but the AI seamlessly switches between god tier sharpshooter and drunk potato. This just adds to the completely borked diffculty curve and non existant "tactical approach".
  
• Repetitive gameplay. This kinda is a result of the problems outlined above, but you have seen everything the game has to offer after 30 minutes if not sooner. Towards the end the game just throws more ♥♥♥♥ at you, artificially increasing the diffculty and thus stretching playtime.
  
• Art design/graphics. I like minimalistic graphics. There are plenty of games out there that did this very right. Spontaneously I am thinking of Limbo that did everything right in that regard. These 2 games do not even play in the same league. 12 Is Better Than 6 art design is so minimalistic that it fails to convey any sense of your surroundings. It does not work as art, it hardly works as an indicator as to what you can or cannot do in a gameplay sense (like shooting through windows, doors, entrances and distinguishing between all that). When you are outside trying to shoot into a house with a roof the game does not even blend it out properly, so there are more than a few instances where you cannot see your enemies. It looks nice on screenshots, it does not work in game, at least not for me.
  
• A thousand little nitpicks. There are a lot more small annoyances that in its sum really made me angry: When you try to fast forward the dialog for example, instead of making the entire sentence appear with a left click and then dismissing it with the next left click, you need to watch the entire text fly in slowly or skip it right away by left clicking. Or you know, just skip the entire conversation quickly by pressing your use button, you will not miss anything of importance besides a bunch of racist slurrs. Quite often you enter a map and are attacked immediately, sometimes while the camera is still flying towards your location. The maps are extremely small, but that may be a blessing when I think of the last 3 or 4 levels that were way too long. The guns do not always shoot where you aim them, especially when you try to shoot "over" a small chair and stuff like that. You get attacked from off screen way too often. The movement speed is way too high for the small frame. The enemy rushers look ridiculous when charging. I could name a bunch more, but I think you get the gist.
  
• The story. What story? Exactly. What a bunch of rubbish. And that ♥♥♥♥♥♥ anti climatic ending...wtf.

All in all I am rather disappointed. I like the setting, Call of Juarez Gunslinger is probably one of my all time favourtie shooters and got that setting so damn right. I liked the idea, I liked the screenshots. Top down shooters are a nice change of pace usually, but if this one had been any longer I would not have finished it.

There are a few positives, like the music which was alright, the fast resets upon dieing and the general idea behind the game. But it would have needed more polish, tweaked gameplay (rethink the cocking mechanic, clean up the UI and make the whole game more responsive) and above all a better AI to offer alternatives. The stealth is a joke and that is due to the lousy AI. Commandos did it so much better almost 20 years ago with hard routines for all the little soldiers in the map. That requires careful planning of course and is not as dynamic as a real AI, but it would have been able to provide smarter gameplay and a better difficulty curve. A lot of wasted potential.

When I read over what I write I realise I am bashing the game quite hard. I do not usually write "not recomended" reviews, simply because I usually only review stuff that I have finished and if a game is terrible I will not waste my time with it. However there is a reason or rather a multitde of reasons why I would suggest only getting this game on a deep sale and I elaborated on them extensively. It is not terribly bad, but it is way overrated here on Steam and got very annoying the longer I played it.

Thanks for reading.

Let me preface this by saying that I do not hate this game, however I am quite astonished by the very positive reviews that it has. [h1]TLDR[/h1] I did like the game or rather the concept initially, but the mechanics that are clunky from the start never really grew on me. Add to this the weak story, minimal art design and repetitive nature of the gameplay and by the end I only wanted to get it over with. [h1]More detail[/h1] Why did I not like the game? [list] [*][u]"Innovative" shooting technique.[/u] You need to cock the hammer before every shot with the revolver that you take. Now I am a competition shooter in real life and can appreciate the idea behind this, however to me it just feels incredibly forced behind a computer screen and in my 6 hours of playtime it never became natural. It was a little better with the lever action and the shotgun. It feels a lot better with the bow. Overall still the worst flaw of the game that may be a deal breaker for many. [*][u]Unresponsiveness of the entire interface.[/u] You can and have to pick up different guns from fallen enemies frequently, even if only to loot their ammo (see below), however the game is really picky about where you stand in relation to the gun you want, how hard you have to press the button (e.g. how long you have to hold the button down before something happens etc.). Theoretically you should be able to pick up a new gun for your empty one during a firefight, but that is absolutely not possible. Same with reloads that sometimes do not wanna go through (especially the shotgun is very noticeable in that regard). You have no indication as to when your gun is ready to be fired again (there IS a delay especially when dual wielding or with the shotgun before you can fire again, but the interface shows the gun is loaded. The lever action when being reloaded changes the aiming reticle to a big animation of the mag being loaded that covers everything you might have been shooting at. Terrible design. [*]Closely tied with the point above is the [u]ammo management[/u]. This is absolutely no problem at the start of the game with the single revolver and the more methodical gameplay. Towards the end you will face a multitude of enemies and fights will get rather hectic. Then after the fight you will be running around, holding [i]r[/i] above every enemy to empty your current gun, pick up the new gun and reload. And you will be doing that [b]a lot[/b]. It just kills the pacing entirely and is tedious af. [*][u]Enemy AI.[/u] What can I say, I did not expect to be fighting extremely sophisticated bots, but all you will see are braindead lemmings. Some levels are over in 20 seconds, because you shot once, wait behind a corner and literally every baddie in the level will come running around that one corner one after the other. That is simply no fun. Others are obviously programmed to sit in one place and aim at a corner. In any case there is absolutely no logic as to when the enemies hit and when they miss. Maybe it is all rng, but the AI seamlessly switches between god tier sharpshooter and drunk potato. This just adds to the completely borked diffculty curve and non existant "tactical approach". [*][u]Repetitive gameplay[/u]. This kinda is a result of the problems outlined above, but you have seen everything the game has to offer after 30 minutes if not sooner. Towards the end the game just throws more shit at you, artificially increasing the diffculty and thus stretching playtime. [*][u]Art design/graphics[/u]. I like minimalistic graphics. There are plenty of games out there that did this very right. Spontaneously I am thinking of [b]Limbo[/b] that did everything right in that regard. These 2 games do not even play in the same league. [i]12 Is Better Than 6[/i] art design is so minimalistic that it fails to convey any sense of your surroundings. It does not work as art, it hardly works as an indicator as to what you can or cannot do in a gameplay sense (like shooting through windows, doors, entrances and distinguishing between all that). When you are outside trying to shoot into a house with a roof the game does not even blend it out properly, so there are more than a few instances where you cannot see your enemies. It looks nice on screenshots, it does not work in game, at least not for me. [*][u]A thousand little nitpicks[/u]. There are a lot more small annoyances that in its sum really made me angry: When you try to fast forward the dialog for example, instead of making the entire sentence appear with a left click and then dismissing it with the next left click, you need to watch the entire text fly in slowly or skip it right away by left clicking. Or you know, just skip the entire conversation quickly by pressing your use button, you will not miss anything of importance besides a bunch of racist slurrs. Quite often you enter a map and are attacked immediately, sometimes while the camera is still flying towards your location. The maps are extremely small, but that may be a blessing when I think of the last 3 or 4 levels that were way too long. The guns do not always shoot where you aim them, especially when you try to shoot "over" a small chair and stuff like that. You get attacked from off screen way too often. The movement speed is way too high for the small frame. The enemy rushers look ridiculous when charging. I could name a bunch more, but I think you get the gist. [*][u]The story[/u]. What story? Exactly. What a bunch of rubbish. [spoiler]And that shitty anti climatic ending...wtf[/spoiler]. [/list] All in all I am rather disappointed. I like the setting, [b]Call of Juarez Gunslinger[/b] is probably one of my all time favourtie shooters and got that setting so damn right. I liked the idea, I liked the screenshots. Top down shooters are a nice change of pace usually, but if this one had been any longer I would not have finished it. There are a few positives, like the music which was alright, the fast resets upon dieing and the general idea behind the game. But it would have needed more polish, tweaked gameplay (rethink the cocking mechanic, clean up the UI and make the whole game more responsive) and above all a better AI to offer alternatives. The stealth is a joke and that is due to the lousy AI. [b]Commandos[/b] did it so much better almost 20 years ago with hard routines for all the little soldiers in the map. That requires careful planning of course and is not as dynamic as a real AI, but it would have been able to provide smarter gameplay and a better difficulty curve. A lot of wasted potential. When I read over what I write I realise I am bashing the game quite hard. I do not usually write "not recomended" reviews, simply because I usually only review stuff that I have finished and if a game is terrible I will not waste my time with it. However there is a reason or rather a multitde of reasons why I would suggest only getting this game on a deep sale and I elaborated on them extensively. It is not terribly bad, but it is way overrated here on Steam and got very annoying the longer I played it. Thanks for reading.