Steam Train Hijack is an intense, action/open world game based in the wild west of America. The player plays a hand for hire and runs a small bodyguard posse to protect trains on their routes. The players character is completely customizable or may select from a pre-set list of characters.
The game is largely open world and the player may depart from their base of operations to set out for potential jobs, recruits and gear to upgrade their group. There are various towns that the player may explore alongside a posse of four other members of their gang. The player may also engage in duels in towns if threatened or if challenged and if the player kills innocents, they will be pursued by the law. The player can also interact with NPC's to gain other, more minor quests. Some NPC's will try to lie or deceive the player into doing something and it is up to the player to decipher their intent. Thesea re randomly generated from a large, pre-made list, offer rewards not as large as train escorts and tend to be easier; the players bread and butter are the train escorts.
The game uses a body language recognition system so the player can attempt to decide whether or not an NPC is lying or telling the truth about something. This is based on facial details such as smirking, tone of voice and posture of the NPC being talked to.
The player's base camp is customizable in the sense that they can place pre-made objects wherever they want, create, expand on or destroy pre-made buildings and add defences like sniper vantages, land mines and gatling guns atop walls. If the player and their posse ends up with too higher notoriety level with enemy gangs, they will likely be attacked at their base camp. So long as the player stays there, they will be attacked more often. The player can stay but will consistently be faced with harder to defeat attacks and if the player does move to another locale, they will have to start from scratch but their notoriety will be reset to zero with the local gang.
There is no skill tree or level up system, game play is all skill based, requiring that the player improve in order to complete harder train escorts. The people the player can recruit will have randomized stats that never change, so the player will need to take a variety of party members to be prepared for any situation.
Train escorts will always consist of varying degrees of difficulty, so if the payer does not feel confident taking on a harder difficulty, they can opt for an easier one. However, harder escorts offer larger rewards.
When aboard the train (dependent on the difficulty) the player and their party will remain on board for a specific amount of time, patrolling the carriages and must keep an eye out for bandits. If spotted, the player must defeat them. One the player can do this is by giving orders to their posse such as attacking the same target, issuing suppressive fire or creating a distraction. The player may also let the AI take control and simply fire into the bandits. If boarded the player must engage in battle aboard the train either in firefights or in close combat. Once the train has been safely escorted the player will receive their reward.
There is no ultimate end game objective either: the objective is to have fun in the wild west shooting and kicking butt!
Image attribution: Rockstar Games (Red Dead Redemption 2010) image retrieved (15 August 2015) from http://cdn.emgn.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/02/red_dead_redemption.jpg
