Fury of West:

In Brief:
I wasn't intending to post a review of todays game as I've not been to bed in three days, though I have dosed off in front of the TV a couple of times during the past few days for the odd half hour or so). It's past 7.30am and I'm just about to finally retire for several hours . I did spent a good 40 or so minutes with the game, making some notes:

What I noted was that the game uses the same menu system as the last four games and it is also a top down shooter much like yesterdays harpoon game. It even has the same upgrade system where three cards with question marks appear after you've survived the first wave. The main differences are obviously the environment, plus in this game apart from the opponents trying to kill you (not by shooting you), in later levels you have arrows flying from different directions to deal with as well (noted after seeing the Steam video, which is the same as the one Falcoware posted) . Also, some rooms have spike traps that if stepped on will take away part of your health. Each room has one to several opponents. Once all the opponents in a room are dispatched, you can rest a while if needed as enemies from other rooms do not move from room to room. When enemies are present you need to keep moving constantly to avoid dying quickly. Upgrades include increase maximum health, decrease enemy bullet speed & increase enemy bullet speed.

Some enemies drop what look like burgers, walking over one of these will take one of your health/lives to full health. You start with two lives,; however, if you are lucky enough to pick the increase health card early on, it adds a third life/ health icon (in the form of a cowboy hat. You cannot pick up a burger if you are at full health. I'm not sure if any unused burgers remain once you've left a room, then return later.

You can see a video of game play HERE

Controls::
WASD = Movement
LMB = fire weapons
Mouse pointer = direction of fire

Up & Down Arrow keys or W &S keys = Accessing menus
Enter = activating menu item
Esc = return to previous menu

There is very limited controller control with the D-Pad accessing menus and the A button activating menu's. As with previous games using this set up, you cannot return to a previous menu without using the keyboard Esc key.

Conclusion:
I wasn't expecting much, but found myself enjoying Fury of West. It's quite basic, but has enough to keep you entertained for short periods. Unfortunately, like other games using this game engine (i.e. Game Maker), you cannot save your progress, so, every time you restart the game you always start at level one. I will be returning to this game at some point just to see how far I can get before losing.

This game would be much improved if you could save your progress, maybe include tables to show how many enemies you killed, how many times you died and more importantly, the ability to create several profiles so that you can play with friends and family.

Notes on Security
I scanned a zipped copy of the installed game using Virus Total and it found zero hits from 63 antimalware engines. You can see the installed games scan HERE.

Thank you to Delenn for the heads up on the two week Epic giveaway bonanza, where they will be giving away a game every day until after Christmas. The first game in the giveaway, which went live at 4pm (UK)/11am (Eastern)/8am (Pacific) yesterday was Bloons TD 6 (a very good and entertaining SP/Coop tower defence game with 97% overwhelmingly positive reviews on Steam from just over over 198 thousand reviews. The next game goes live at the same time today (Friday). Each game is live for only 24 hours (much like the daily game giveaways here. Today is the last chance to grab one of the Humble Bundles that has several collections of excellent games for a fraction of what it would cost if you purchased the games individually. I posted details yesterday. Today I'll just include the link to all of the available bundles HERE (they have added two more bundles since yesterday a Stealth bundle and a Warhammer bundle. The Civilization bundle ends today at 7pm (£12.20 for £382.24 worth of Sid Meier's games) .