Evil West

Where do I start with this game. It was a free monthly game from Sony so that right there should tell you it's not great. Cowboys and vampires ok. Looks decent and characters are somewhat interesting. Combat. Yeah the combat isn't bad until you get further into the game. Has an aim assist that works fine until you will never hit what you want. Without the aim assist, you still can't hit what you need to because the opportunities are so short that you need the aim assist to snap to the target quickly. Thing is, there are so many enemies that you will always snap to something you are not trying to shoot at. So either way, you can't hit what you need to. Dodge mechanics are awful. The button combos are just awkward and blend together so that you will be activating combos or actions you are not intending to. Could have been fun, but it just isn't. Do not spend money on this game.

A lot of reviewers have commented already that Evil West feels like an adventure conceived in the previous generation of gaming. Open world games are now the expected and they've become the new normal. I love those kinds of games when they're done well but there's still a place for a linear and directed story. I enjoyed that I didn't have to do side missions or fetch quests in Evil West and that it moved from environment to environment at a quick clip. It helped me focus on bashing in the next monster instead of checking off extra missions on my list. I also enjoyed the different settings (I'll have more notes on the animation/rendering later) but the game has a very steampunk/graphic novel visual style that was a lot of fun. The character design is well done, Jesse looks like a bad@$$ with his varied weaponry and his fellow Rentier Institute members are definitely guys/girls you wouldn't want to mess with. Add in some gruesome looking enemies to fight (their design reminded me a lot of one of my favourite games The Suffering) who all possess some gruesome elements that highlight them among their fellow vampiric fighters.

If a game is fun to play, you can forgive a lot. Luckily, the standout element of Evil West is the combat. Jesse can dispatch his foes in a variety of way and not only do the guns and the gauntlet look great but they're a blast to wield. Some of the detractors of Evil West have pointed that it borrows a lot from of the reboot of God of War..... they're not wrong but it works here. Instead of being annoyed by wave after wave of enemies, I looked forward to it and whipping out the new gun I'd earned from my skill progression tree.

Evil West centres around Jesse Rentier, son of William Rentier. He's the best field agent at the famed Rentier Institute, the secret agency charged with supernatural/monstrous threats that's funded by the U. S. government. His father is in charge of the Institute and hopes that Jesse will take his place but Jesse doesn't have the temperament or the interest in being in charge. The villainous D'Abono clan are on the rampage with Felicity having taken charge and threatening national security in the process. The overall story in Evil West gets the job done, I wasn't impressed with it at first but as the game went on, I started to appreciate it more. The prickly relationship between Jesse and William gets a little more fraught and interesting. I also grew to enjoy Jesse bouncing off of Emilia Blackwell and other characters like Vergil. Evil West isn't the next leap forward in storytelling but it did a decent job in keeping me focused on what would happen next.

Evil West is largely content to be what it is and even though there aren't many drawbacks as a result of overreaching, there are a few worth mentioning. A couple of reviewers have pointed out the level designs being very similar and I don't disagree. It didn't bother me as much but what was evident was the setting not being rendered/animated properly in the background. The sawmill level is the worst, it's really choppy and doesn't look fully done. I also thought while the character design was good, this is the rare circumstance where I didn't like a lot of the voice acting. There were many scenes where the characters seemed to be trying to out gravel/rumble each other and while it wasn't awful at all times, I just didn't find much to compliment.

Evil West reminds me of another couple of less heralded ps4 releases in Control and similarly themed Vampyr. All 3 of them aren't the complete package with some highlight elements and some minor drawbacks. Much like Control, the combat and gameplay is the best part of Evil West along with a decent story to keep you interested as you bounce from area to area. Evil West resembles Vampyr in the moody setting, the skills progression tree and even some of its faults (repetitive enemies, level design and some iffy rendering on the environments). I would put Evil West above the latter and maybe a little below the former. Evil West is a lot of fun and is good enough that it checks all the required boxes. I'd give it somewhere between a 8-9 but I'm going to round down because even though I enjoyed it quite a bit, there are games out there that enjoy the same successes yet are more complete projects. If you're up for a classic shoot em' up, beat em' up romp through the haunted old west, Evil West could be just what the doctor ordered to relieve some open world fatigue.

Evil west is an action third person game with excellent combat a very deep story and lore.

Graphics are pretty good in motion. There are a few weak textures here and there but the character design and enemy design and overall world/level design is very good.

Sound is a definite plus with a very epic score (Western style) and the sound effects of the weapons, creatures and action when its in full swing are all very good.

Gameplay is very enjoyable this is a very power fantasy type of game and what I mean by that is it makes you feel like a bad-ass. In super short time you'll be uppercutting vamps and other creatures 30 feet into the air and then firing your six shooter into them. This type of gameplay never gets old and is just so much fun.

Levels are pretty linear with a few side areas for those who like to explore and it has a few puzzles that are easy to solve but it's old school as not all games need to be open world and have you spend dozens of hours collecting bits of tat to make the game with run times of 100 hours (assassins creed)

Overall its a great game and a fair price for a AA game that has the odd tiny bug but compare that to many AAA titles that get released for double the money and ten times the bugs I don't think we can be too critical.

What this game isn't:

• story-rich (boring)
• open-world (boring)
• riddled with pointless side quests (boring)
• driven by a serious narrative with complex characters in order to avoid what many game journalists call "ludonarrative dissonance" (boring)
• a walking simulator with a dark and eerie atmosphere, packed with cheap jumpscares and unnerving suspense that feels almost as if the devs were desperately trying to hide the fact you could probably beat it in two hours if the protagonist could run (boring)
• gameplay flow constantly interrupted by pointless looting, crafting, upgrading, following an NPC character for twenty minutes, dialogue that progresses the story, etc. (BORING, BORING, BORING, BORING, BORING)

What this game is:

• full of gore (fun)
• full of gunplay (fun)
• full of melee (fun)
• full of bloodthirsty savage beasts that pack a punch and want you dead (fun)
• with an over-the-top cheesy story about a badass cowboy that has to slaughter a ton of vampires and save humanity (fun)
• full of enemies, takedowns, action, boss fights, etc. (FUN, FUN, FUN, FUN)

Just play the game if you want to feel like it's 2010 again. When you were younger and eager to go home and play. When video games were short, but amazing. When you sat down for half an hour and 5 hours later you had no idea you were playing for so long. When games had gameplay, instead of microtransactions, trailing missions, "realism" and all that other trash they're stuffed with now...

This game definitely needs more attention, than it's been getting since release. Don't get me wrong, it's not "best game ever" and it's never been "game of the year" candidate. But it's a really solid B-Game. You know, like B-Movie, but a game.

The story is... There. It's ok, do not expect any plot twists here, characters are flat and, to an extent, stereotypical. Main villain is just a brat and is just annoying. The lore, though, seems interesting by itself, I would not mind exploring some proper RPG in this world, and the fact that it's also a western with vampires - it just adds more to it. But it is more about experience, I think. It is extremely linear, but environments do feel relatively unique, and they do present quite a few moments, that just feel good.

What is really worthy in this game is combat. Yes, it's not Devil May Cry, not even by a longshot. But it does involve juggling between melee combat and several types of range weapons. What's more it feels satisfying. Like there is this "oomph" to your actions. You also feel a bit more vulnerable than Dante or Nero, so you may want to be a bit more strategic.

It does have a few issues. Bugs with some achievements (I had one), low-resolution models inside the game (when you look at your character or weapons), periodic dips in performance... The switching between weapons is also kind of inconsistent: in some cases press of a button switches between several weapons, in some you literally "equip" a weapon, in some you just press a different button. You do get used to that, but something tells me it could have been done better, still.

Overall, I am not sure if this game is worth replaying with its New Game+ mode, but as a one-time fun experience - definitely worth the time. Probably, at a discount in terms of price, though.