The Son – A Wild West Tale | Review (PC)

What can a mother go to to protect her child? And what will the thought of never seeing their mother again lead to in a child?
These will be the questions that will accompany us from the beginning to the end of our adventure.

A trip to the far west

El Hijo is a stealth game set in the wild west in which we will play the role of a small child who, separated from his mother for reasons initially unknown to us, will go in search of her through deserts, canyons and mines, all full of "enemies" who will not wait to capture us , all in a very cartoonish sauce with caricatured enemies, deliberately a bit clumsy and levels full of colors and all those common places characteristic of the far west.

The game is based on a rather simple but effective mechanism that will test our skills as players. With the directional keys or WASD we will be able to move our protagonist, by pressing the space key we will be able to crouch to hide behind crates, barrels or inside the tall grass.

As we continue in the game we will get various tools that will be useful to distract the enemies and go unnoticed, these will be activated with the Q button and used with the E button, we will have a limited number available, with the exception of the slingshot which will be our first gadget with infinite shots, so we will have to carefully weigh it the use to be able to make a mockery of the opponents.

In fact, each enemy has a cone of vision of about 40 ° in front of him with a distance that will vary according to his nature, obstacles and environment, the miners, for example, will have a limited vision, while the riflemen they will be able to see us from far away. Certain enemies who are particularly attentive and loyal to duty will then be impossible to distract and we will not be able to do anything other than take advantage of the surrounding environment to sneak out of their vision, perhaps hiding behind an obstacle or taking advantage of their rounds to get around them.

A test of skill

Le maps will offer us crossroads that will allow us players to approach the situation in an always different way, making use of our gadgets or not, making us choose on several occasions between the shortest but most difficult way or the longest but safest way. Using the TAB key we will be able to obtain a wider view in order to plan our route.

In dark places we will then be totally invisible to enemies even when we are practically adjacent to them, and with our slingshot we can destroy lanterns to obscure some illuminated areas.

In the maps we will be able to find some imprisoned children, it will be our task, if we wish, to help them by talking to them by freeing them and "motivating them". Most of these children will be in optional locations on the map, thus adding an extra degree of challenge in case you want to help them all.

As we free more and more children we will get a series of collectable , to get them all, however, it will not be enough just to help all the children, we will also have to succeed in the definitive challenge, that is to complete all the levels of the game without ever being discovered by any enemy, a task certainly not easy.

A fairy tale in the desert

On our journey through the wastelands we will pass through arid steppes, dark caves, mines full of explosives, enemy outposts and we will have to find our way even in the middle of a sandstorm.

Whatever our moment in history, whether we are outside or inside, in a lush garden or in the carriages of a train, we will always have in front of our eyes a delicious cure of the settings, always rich in details, however simple, but which make each level unique and characterized and which transform the experience from a simple "guard and thieves" to a real adventure, in a journey that, however short, will lead us to crossing untold distances.

A small pity is the soundtrack, quite banal and repetitive in the long run, especially in the longer levels, in which we will end up listening to the same tune for several minutes. The different ones, on the other hand, are very beautiful cutscene of interludes at various levels, all very short but really nice.

The game will keep you busy for a little over ten hours, the time necessary to finish its story in a linear way, but in case you want to save all the children scattered within the maps and finish the whole story without being discovered once, longevity will increase in relation to your skill level.

El Hijo is a simple video game, but not trivial for this, in which we will have to test our logical skills in order to escape the countless enemies that populate the numerous game maps, all very varied and articulated.
The tools made available to us will allow us to approach each situation in the way we prefer, evaluating when it is best to use a tool and when to keep it.
The story is very simple and straightforward, but there will be some surprises.