People love to dive into video games that remind them of the shows they’re watching on TV, this we know. You get hooked on a great show, be it a fantasy setting or something more grounded and realistic, and you want more of that. And sometimes that’s a big juicy video game that lets you live out the fantasy for a few hours.
So, what if the show you’ve been watching is Yellowstone on Stan? What are some games you could dive into that would give you the full Montana ranch experience?
Yellowstone follows the Dutton family, the owners of the generational Yellowstone Dutton Ranch, the largest in the U.S. state of Montana. Ranch life is already hard enough when you’re trying to raise a family, but John Dutton (played by Kevin Costner) finds himself under threat from various commercial parties seeking to buy his significant plot of land out from under him. What’s an old cowboy to do? The show’s fifth season kicks off on Stan on November 14.
There’s a good chance you’re going to hit the end of Yellowstone Season 5 and find yourself in the mood for more wild west drama. There are a few video games to cure what ails ya.
1. Red Dead Redemption
Let’s get it out of the way now: Rockstar’s Red Dead Redemption, and its sequel Red Dead Redemption 2, are the quintessential cowboy video games. Set during the end of the Wild West era across the United States, the games follow the kind of gruff, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth cowboys you’d expect to find in a battered old western. But it’s also a video game so you can make them do silly things too. These are huge games and, between the two of them, may well take you months of play to complete. They are the gold standard when it comes to video games set in the Wild West. If you want the hard yakka Yellowstone experience, RDR is the game to play.
2. Desperados 3
Desperados 3 is the perfect game for anyone who loves cowboys and tactics. A turn-based strategy game similar to XCOM, Desperados 3 is all about finding the right position in a duel. It’s a rough-and-tumble game modelled on a rough-and-tumble era, where only your smarts and your six-shooters can save you. Desperados 3 is unique among video games because there isn’t really any other series doing a serious tactics game set in the West West. That gives it a cool flavour you can’t really get anywhere else.
Also XCOM-likes are cool. Everyone knows that.
3. Sunset Riders
Alright, look, you might need an emulator for this one. Sunset Riders was a side-scrolling arcade shooter released in arcades in 1991, which had found its way to the Sega Mega Drive and Super Nintendo by 1993. Considered one of the best wild west games ever made at the time, Sunset Riders is still a complete blast to play today. Its fast and furious gameplay keeps things challenging, and its wildly varied levels have you hooked in to see what’s coming next. From saloon shootouts to high-speed train heists, Sunset Riders has it all.
4. Oregon Trail
“You have died of dysentery.” One of the most famous phrases in video game history, born out of The Oregon Trail, one of the earliest survival games ever made. The trailer above is for the remake, which came out in 2020 on mobile devices. The Oregon Trail is a game about pilgrims and gold prospectors making the dangerous crossing towards the American west coast in the country’s earliest colonial eras. It isn’t about making it to the west coast necessarily, it’s about how long you can keep your little caravan alive before they cark it. This remake massively expands the options available in the ’80s original, with an inventory for supplies and events like river crossings, cart breakdowns, and more.
5. Frog Detective 3: Corruption At Cowboy County
Sure, you don’t play a cowboy in Frog Detective 3. In fact, you play as a widely-celebrated and incredibly capable frog that is also a detective. However, you do get to enjoy a cowboy-adjacent world that exists around you, packed to the brim with some darn-tootin’ characters in the once-lawless Cowboy County. Frog Detective 3 is (sadly) the last title in the Frog Detective series, but it’s a whole lot of fun and takes a sillier approach to the wild, wild west theme. As the iconic frog detective, it’s your job to crack the case of the missing hats, as all the hats in Cowboy County have gone missing, and is a cowboy town really a cowboy town if there are no cowboy hats? No. it is not. What does a game like Frog Detective have to do with Yellowstone? Both the main characters have (checks notes) problems. Look, it’s great. Play it.
Season 5 of Yellowstone will start streaming on Stan from November 14, 2022.
Leave a Reply