Relying on how outdated you might be, you may bear in mind the idea of “The Weekend Recreation,” as within the title you rented or borrowed from a buddy and beat in like 2 or three sittings between Friday and Sunday. And that was it. Perhaps you replay just a few ranges to seize some collectibles, however nothing greater than that. You had fun, noticed the credit roll, and moved on. Western-horror hybrid Evil West, out tomorrow, seems like a weekend recreation. In a world stuffed with ongoing updates, advanced endgames, lengthy battle passes, and infinite loot, it’s been good enjoying one thing linear, easy, and enjoyable.
Developed by Flying Wild Hog, Evil West is a third-person action-adventure recreation set in an alt-history model of the traditional Wild West period of America. Not like actuality, this model options much more vampires, steampunk-like equipment, and magic. Evil West stars Jesse Reitner, a person that appears so much like Arthur Morgan from Purple Lifeless Redemption II.
As a part of the high-tech and secretive Reitner Institute (based by his father) Jesse fights off evil monsters, vampires, and different creatures of the night time to assist hold the nation secure. However when a brand new sort of vampire arrives and begins creating an enormous, hard-to-kill military of undead bloodsuckers, Jesse and his pals are the few who can cease them and save the day.
Screenshot: Flying Wild Hog / Focus Leisure / Kotaku
There isn’t any getting round it: Evil West is foolish, however in a great way. Its narrative has so much in frequent with one of the best B-movies and pulp tales from the previous. Characters act extra like folks pretending to be folks, than actual people. Dialogue is stuffed with swear phrases and exposition. All of it’s tacky and foolish within the good type of approach. Mixed with the steampunk devices, monsters, and violence, it actually does play out like a grindhouse flick you may need caught on TV at like 2 am again within the 90s on TNT.
One key energy in Evil West’s favor is that it’s an excellent motion recreation, mixing fast-paced melee fight with precision gunplay the place you combo the whole lot collectively. Once you begin Evil West, the sport actually focuses on educating you every new factor, slowly constructing you right into a vampire-killing machine. That is good as there’s so much to be taught and by the tip, you’ll be juggling just a few totally different weapons and gadgets throughout a few of the more durable fight encounters. Frustratingly, I did discover a few fights on the finish that received actually arduous, so be ready for some problem spikes.
Evil West
BACK OF THE BOX QUOTE
“Come for the vampire killing. Keep for the werewolves and big leeches, you freak.”
TYPE OF GAME
Linear, third-person action-adventure steampunk-horror-western hybrid shooter
LIKED
Heavy and satisfying fight, foolish story, no additional bullshit or junk, punching stuff
DISLIKED
Some annoying bugs, just a few bizarre problem spikes
PLATFORMS
PS5 (Performed), PS4, Xbox One, Xbox Sequence X/S, PC
RELEASE DATE
November 22, 2022
PLAYED
Nearly 14 hours.
For a western-themed recreation, it could be shocking that the star of the present isn’t a revolver or rifle—although they’re each are good and helpful right here—as an alternative, it’s the silly-looking gauntlet Jessie wears. This factor is nice. You should use it to electrically yank over enemies, stun them, ship them flying into different monsters or off cliffs, and extra. As you improve Jesse you acquire entry to extra electrical assaults and counters, ultimately changing into a one-man, lightning-spewing, vampire-killing military in a trenchcoat. And no, it doesn’t make a lot sense how this gauntlet can achieve this a lot, however who cares. It suits completely on this B-movie world and universe. It is also one other piece of Evil West that jogs my memory of these PS2 video games of outdated. Video games that had been extra involved about enjoyable over attempting to make the whole lot really feel lifelike or logical.
However what actually helped me fall in love with Evil West isn’t the heavy, strong fight. Nor was it the horror-infused western vistas and areas, although these are good, too. No, what I really like about Evil West is that it’s only a (Hank Hill voice) easy, honest-to-god, linear and enjoyable, goddamn online game. There’s no battle move or microtransactions. No crafting and no loot to gather, improve or commerce. No MMO-lite options or different gamers working round doing issues. No copy-paste aspect quests or big, however empty open worlds.
Flying Wild Hog / Focus Leisure
It’s a 16-mission linear motion recreation with some easy talent bushes to make your character higher and that’s it. Most gamers will beat it in about 11-13 hours. This may look like a bizarre factor to reward, however in impact stripping out all of the superficial parts you come to anticipate out of recent video games signifies that Evil West hones in on what it does greatest, reasonably than broaden past its strengths.
Positive, in the event you look intently, you’ll discover the seams and corners that had been reduce in Evil West, doubtless because of its smaller price range in comparison with different single-player motion video games like God of Conflict. Characters exterior of cutscenes don’t transfer their lips once they speak, audio high quality can typically dip, and ranges solely look good in the event you don’t poke round home windows to see past the linear space of the mission. However the place it issues, Evil West works nice. Enjoying on PS5, I ran the sport in its efficiency mode and located a rock-solid 60fps expertise, with just a few dips throughout one explicit second in a single late-game mission. Digicam and motion controls are responsive and work high quality always. This could be a price range recreation, however Flying Wild Hog spent the cash in the suitable locations.
For me, Evil West is the type of recreation I miss lately. I’ll totally admit, I really like video games like Future and Fortnite, video games that by no means finish and are stuffed with battle passes, crafting, loot, and so on. These video games can present hours of enjoyable and are nice to play whereas chilling with pals or listening to a podcast. However I don’t need the whole lot to be a fancy, all-encompassing, time-monopolizing social expertise that continues to develop and evolve as time goes on. And Evil West is a superb instance of the type of video games I would like extra of transferring ahead. Not the whole lot wants an endgame or a crafting desk. Generally, I simply wish to transfer ahead, hear some dangerous banter and punch some monsters within the face for just a few hours. And Evil West gave me precisely that. No extra. No much less.
