Obvious comparisons will be drawn between 12 Is Better Than 6 [official site] and Hotline Miami – with its unrelenting, hedonistic disarray of bullets and blood and death, shot from the lofty heights of a bird’s eye view – yet it’s more than a Wild West-set duplicate. The top-down, “kill everyone” shooter has blasted its way out.

While Hotline Miami more often than not requires deft tactics to best its levels, there’s always scope to tear through them reliant solely on luck and ammunition. 12 Is Better Than 6 doesn’t allow such recklessness. For one, the bad guys don’t miss. Ever. Which means planning two, three and four moves ahead quickly becomes essential. So too does making each bullet count, as the game’s shooting mechanics dictate the need to re-cock your revolver after every shot fired. At first this frustrated me, but, after I got used to it, it felt right. The baddies may’ve been freakishly good at hunting me down, but it rarely felt unfair. If I cocked up and found myself splayed out on the dirt with hand drawn blood oozing from my gaping wounds, that was on me.

“Wield the authentic weaponry: revolvers, guns, bows, knives, pitchforks and even ordnance,” reads the blurb for the game that scraped through a successful Kickstarter campaign with some eleventh hour high drama (a bunch of backers pulled out at the last minute, dropping its goal below its ask that it eventually made back up). “Rob trains, protect the innocents, collude with Sheriffs, and eradicate the gangs … Step into the dirty, lawless and cruel world of the North America land, 1873.”

Hang on a minute, that’s the same year ol’ RPS was founded. There’s only one winner there, pardner.

12 Is Better Than 6 is out now on Steam for the discounted price of £5.94. Here’s its launch trailer:



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