The dead still teach in Guns of Eschaton

A dead enemy still has something to teach you in Guns of Eschaton. Aim at the body and your Codex switches to its entry, just as it does when the creature is alive. The book follows your attention across the battlefield, giving the aftermath of a gunfight a useful second life. Before heading towards the next threat, you can spend a moment understanding the one you've already survived.

That's a particularly appealing habit for Eschatology Entertainment's apocalyptic Western, where enemies have weak points to shoot in a specific sequence. The free PC demo remains available ahead of the game's 8 December launch. October's updates have made the Codex faster to handle and better at following your crosshair, putting a little more convenience around a demanding idea: remembering where to shoot is part of landing the shot.

A moving target with an order to learn

The developer calls this a "cognitive headshot". Weak points come with an order, and reaching them involves watching what the enemy is doing. Some require an opponent to turn around, leave cover or stop moving a limb. Accuracy gets a more particular job here. You need to recognise the right moment to aim at the right part of a creature, with the sequence in mind.

Those conditions make waiting interesting. A turning body can reveal the part you need next; a moving limb can postpone an opportunity. The enemy's animation and position become things to study while holding your fire. There's a lovely Western fit to that patience, with scarce ammunition and slow reloads giving a gunslinger good reasons to resist emptying the weapon as quickly as possible.

The Codex grows as you face enemies, adding lore, sequence details and advice for mastering them. Meeting a creature again therefore has a second attraction alongside the chance to survive it more neatly. You're developing an account of what it does. A troublesome opponent can become a subject you understand better, with that knowledge available to consult between encounters.

For readers who enjoy recognising a dangerous individual inside a busy fight, our look at Warhammer Survivors' faction creatures follows another useful trail. Here, the attention goes inside the individual target: its anatomy, its movement and the order in which you can exploit it. The little book has a very practical reason to stay close to your gun.

Keep the book open after the shooting

The official screenshot of the Codex makes the appeal wonderfully tangible. An illustrated Glutton fills the right-hand page, with annotations around its body, while a living creature occupies the ruins beyond the book. There's something pleasingly studious about carrying that reference into such an inhospitable place. The drawing gives the monster another identity: a collection of details worth understanding as well as a shape approaching you.

October's demo changes attend to the everyday business of using it. The 10 October hotfix sped up equipping, putting away, opening and closing the Codex. The 13 October update improved how reliably it switches to the enemy in your crosshair, including targets more than 100 metres away. These are welcome changes for an object with so much work to do during a fight.

Its targeting also works on dead enemies. That gives you a straightforward way to revisit a creature after the immediate pressure has passed, with the body serving as a shortcut to the relevant entry. You can expand the Codex into its full book view with the right mouse button, opening the contents and browsing the entries available to you. The reference can follow a target or receive your undivided attention.

Hunter's Vision arrives at the end of the tutorial, another October change that places a learning tool early in the adventure. The developer also points players towards scanning bullets and recommends checking the Codex in a safe spot between fights. There are several ways into understanding an enemy, with a quiet pause to read forming part of that preparation.

Knowledge leaves room for a different build

Sequence shooting sits alongside other approaches. Eschatology teaches it and parry shooting in the tutorial, while explicitly leaving players room to build around alternatives. Its examples include managing dynamite, three schools of magic, combining a shotgun with whip melee, and a fragile Fanaticism build. Learning the sequence is an invitation to exploit a creature's rules, with other equipment and abilities available to shape your response.

The demo's 19 October update adds the Deadeye archetype, a former Buffalo Bill performer known for ricocheting shots from coins and bells. It also gives the demo's archetypes extra passives to buy at Hounds' Camp, changing or enhancing their active abilities. That camp is reached through the Campfire travel menu and offers weapons, abilities and equipment for experimenting with a build.

Custom ammunition extends that preparation into the weapon itself. The full game's revolver cylinder can hold different bullet types, giving you a sequence of your own to arrange alongside the enemy's vulnerabilities. The attraction is wonderfully specific: you study what the monster requires, then think about what you're carrying into its reach. A gun and a field guide make an engaging pair.

The standalone demo offers a place to explore that relationship before December. Its most intriguing souvenir is the habit of looking again after the shooting stops. A corpse still directs the Codex towards an entry, and the next encounter gives those pages another use. In this burning West, taking a moment to read the dead feels like sensible gunslinging.