I won’t mince words — the basic, vanilla Western isn’t to everybody’s liking. Some people find the concept of cowboys and indians, the dusty wilds of the American Southwest and gunslingers dueling in the street at high noon to be hokey; anachronistic relics from the childhood fantasies of a generation silly enough to have been born before personal computers could fit in your front pocket.

Let us ignore for just a moment how stupid and wrong these unimaginative people are (and they are, believe me) and assume that the standard Western in video game form is boring on principle (which they generally aren’t). What do you do with something that you don’t especially like on its own? You mix it with something different that you do like and you suddenly find that it doesn’t taste as bad as you originally thought. Or, if you already liked it, you now realize you’ve created something truly amazing… or at the very least interesting.

The following five games take the standard tropes of the Old West and stir in something that changes up the flavor — kind of like Cold Stone Creamery, only without the pretentious highway robbery prices. Seriously, $4 for a small with one extra mix-in!? Where the hell’s my Dairy Queen?

Ahem. But I digress…

Welcome to the Weird West. Read more