Westward II: Heroes of the Frontier
Explore the Wild West, build thriving settlements, and fight off dangerous bandits!
Westward II: Heroes of the Frontier is a new casual game from Sandlot Games for Macs and PCs. It’s sort of a hybrid simulation and real-time strategy game that has elements found in games such as The Oregon Trail, Age of Empires, and Virtual Villagers. It’s popular predecessor, Westward, is only available for the PC and there’s already a sequel, Westward III: Gold Rush, also only currently available for the PC.
Westward II is actually pretty complex for a casual game and there’s alot to do. Before you begin you must choose one of three Pioneers that are available to play. Each has their own strengths and weaknesses. You start out in the remote outpost of Oxbow Bend with nothing more than the bare essentials. As with other real-time strategy games the gathering of resources and resource management is very important. These resources include wood, water, food, and gold. You are given a small amount of these resources at the start. You can use these resources to construct your first buildings and attract your first settlers. The only structures available to you at first are shacks, cabins, wells, and farms. So you could build a shack, for example, which will attract one settler, followed by a well and a farm. Wells are a constant source of water while farms are a constant source of food, as long as you have at least one settler working on the farm. As you construct more shacks and cabins more settlers will show up looking for work. You can put them to work by simply dragging them onto the structure where you want them to work, like the farm for example. Even more settlers will show up looking for work when the nearby settlement of Hope River is suddenly destroyed. As your community grows more resources and buildings will be required to sustain it and keep the settlers happy. If settlers become unhappy they may leave. As you progress through the game and gain more experience more buildings and upgrades will be unlocked for you to choose from. Everything from water towers and granaries to corn, pigs, and cattle are just a few of the additional buildings and upgrades available to you as you advance. There’s really a surprising variety here.
Quests are also a big part of Westward II and there’s a whole assortment of them. Some are simple while others are quite elaborate. Some of the more simpler ones include stuff like building a farm or collecting a specific amount of a resource for a settler who needs help. More elaborate ones include establishing a complete, self-sustaining community or constructing several bridges across a river to restore commerce. Quests are another way to gain experience and advance in the game. There always seems to be a settler needing something to be done and the game does a good job keeping track of all this for you with its nifty on-screen quest checklist. There’s also the ongoing larger quests involving bringing the nuisance that is the Copperhead Gang to justice and finding the hideout of the Mad Russian. The Mad Russian is a holdover from the first Westward and is apparently responsible for the destruction of the Hope River settlement.
The complexity of Westward II makes it much more challenging than the typical casual game - sometimes perhaps too challenging. There is so much to do and keep track of that you might find yourself fighting a losing battle against overpopulation, plagues, droughts, famine, and bandit attacks. I had particular trouble with famine and bandit attacks. Early on, I didn’t have the experience to hire a sheriff so I had to deal with the bandit attacks myself. As if I didn’t already have enough to do I had to personally run around and engage in gunfights with the bandits myself. Your character, or Pioneer as they call it, can do a lot of things on his or her own like collect food, collect wood, and obviously fight bandits but these things are better left for the hired help. Your time is better spent exploring, building structures, talking to people, and managing your community. When you get sidetracked too much bad things start to happen and settlers start to get unhappy and leave. That’s where famine also became a problem for me as I had too many settlers and not enough food coming in. If you’re a fan of real-time strategy games you probably won’t have too much problem with this. However if you’re not it might be a bit overwhelming as it can be pretty challenging, especially at the beginning.
I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the production values of Westward II. The graphics are in 3D and very well done. They’re detailed and are accompanied by cool animated effects such as moving water and smoke rising from chimneys. Throw in some appropriate music and sound effects and you have a living breathing Wild West atmosphere.
If you can left-click and left-click and drag than you should be able to play this game. Moving your Pioneer around is oddly done by left-clicking and dragging him (or her) to your chosen destination. You could also simply select your Pioneer then right click somewhere to have him walk there. I’m not certain why they couldn’t just do that with left-clicking but at least you have the option of left-clicking and dragging movement if you can’t right-click. Or you could just play the game in windowed mode which makes all these worries a moot point. In windowed mode you have full access to KeyStrokes and s SwitchXS. This might be preferable anyways because one button mouse users and dwell click users will easily be able to do anything they need to do such as right-clicking and zooming in and out by pressing the "+" and "-" keys. One caveat though. In windowed mode it’s difficult to scroll around the screen for some reason. Moving the mouse cursor to the edge of any part of the screen is supposed to scroll the view in that direction. In windowed mode this is flaky at best. Fortunately you can do the same thing using the arrow keys on KeyStrokes (or SwitchXS). You can also click on the mini map to quickly move to any location you want to look at which is also useful. So while it takes a little getting used to Westward II is ultimately pretty easy to control. And if you’re still not certain you can download a free time-limited demo (Mac or PC) and try it for yourself.
So if you’re getting tired of all those hidden object and tile matching casual games then Westward II might be exactly what you are looking for. Fans of real-time strategy games might particularly like this game. The high production values and surprisingly complex and deep gameplay make this game quite a bargain at $9.99. Head over to Sandlot Games for more information on all the PC versions of the Westward games. Click here for more information on the Mac version of Westward II.
PC System Requirements:
- Windows XP/Vista
- Pentium III 750MHz or better (1.0 GHz Vista)
- 256 MB System RAM (512 MB Vista)
- 32MB Video RAM, Hardware Accelerated 3D
- Internet Explorer 5.0+, AOL 5,6 or MSN browsers
- Direct-X 9 (10 Vista)
- Keyboard & mouse required
- Joystick and game pad are not supported
Mac System Requirements:
- Universal Binary (PPC/Intel)
- Mac OS X 10.4.11 or later
Paul Natsch
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