Westerns are arguably the most ludicrous genre of movie ever made. Regardless of it being the psychotically cheerful Annie Get Your Gun or the just plain psychotic Pekinpah movies, they are all grossly romanticised fictional depictions of a very brief period of modern history, and I love them all. I recently re-watched Red River with John Wayne, containing one scene where the heroine gets stapled to a wagon wheel by an arrow through the shoulder but neither complains nor stops reloading. Makes Trinity look like Mother Goose.

The genre is undergoing a little renaissance in gaming terms with the recent release of the latest Call of Juarez installment, and the upcoming release of Rockstar’s next sandbox opus Read Dead Redemption. But why do just two games represent resurgence for this genre? Why is every second game not a Western? The fancypants edition of the next Modern Warfare game is to come with night vision goggles, but how much cooler would it be if it was instead Call of Duty: Mexico 1860, containing free enormous sombrero and poncho?

Back in 1997 Lucasarts published Outlaws, a fairly simple and modest cell shaded FPS that was overlooked due to being eclipsed by the technologically mighty Quake 2 and the market trend for sci-fi themed shooting. There is to this day strong opinion that it has remained the only good Wild West themed game, and certainly the only good western themed FPS. It’s still excellent fun if you can get the emulation to play along, but why does it remain such a rarefied, tumbleweed haunted genre?

This is the genre that has everything a production team could possibly want: violence and even better, the omnipresent threat of violence, no concept of gun control, an actual plausible reason to have an abandoned mine level, breezes billowing long coats in slow motion, good guys and bad guys, treasure, exploration, really, really big hats. Most of the offerings that have been made missed the mark – the clownish Red Dead Revolver, the deeply dull Dead Man’s Hand, and the disappointing Gun. The inexplicable drought was finally ended with the excellent Call of Juarez, which managed to draw inspiration from a dozen western elements without descending into pastiche, and lately Call of Juarez : Bound in Blood.

The Juarez games are not your Jimmy Stewart western, not even your John Wayne western. No one had little stars picked out in rhinestones on their chaps. Nothing is powder pink or sky blue. Absolutely no one says ‘Shucks, Howdy!’ and if there is a Square-dance in either title it is a very well concealed Easter egg indeed. They are full of the blood and dust of the Eastwood movies, from Pale Rider to Unforgiven. The Walton’s would be found naked and dead in the charred remains of their Little House on The Prairie fairly quickly in the world of Juarez.

One of the strongest arguments for more Western games is the fact that you don’t actually have to construct it all that finely to make it a great game. Your game can misfire with half a dozen little details as the heart and soul of the Wild West game is in its atmosphere, rather than the level of its detail. One of the factors that made Outlaws more enduring than other tales of western revenge was the strength of the characterization drawn out through cut sequence and in-game development. Red Dead Revolver and Gun both lacked the sense of lawlessness and the lunatic edge that made the West so wild, which the Juarez titles have it in spades. A gritty flush of spades, held in a dirty hand, around a wonky poker table, in a mean saloon. That smells funny.

Both Fallout 3 and the last FarCry were only a horse and a Sergio Leone soundtrack away from being a Wild West game, and was an excellent example of a technically flawed products that were still enormous fun. They transcended their shortcomings by giving us a gritty, open world in which to mostly make up our own character written in blood and lead. FarCry included long introspective moments trekking over deserts and prairies, mercenary motives at heart and distant violence in mind – a feature that infuriated some but made it game of the year with enough people to count. This measured pace, the sense of solitude and freedom not captured elsewhere – even in the GTA series – is at the heart of the Western game. Does Red Dead Redemption represent the point where the technology is strong enough and the gaming public mature enough to finally get the great Wild West magnum opus it deserves? Will I in fact swallow my toothpick in excitement before it arrives?

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