After I take into consideration what the true world could be like if it had been overrun by vampires, werewolves, and zombie-like shambling corpses, that imaginary apocalypse doesn’t evoke almost as a lot maniacal cackling from me because the one in Evil West. From the Tesla-inspired electrical energy weapons to the gratuitous gore and bloodshed, this old-school motion sport was a number of the most enjoyable monster murdering I’ve accomplished shortly – sadly, its formulaic construction additionally make it a number of the most repetitive.
Evil West’s roughly 12-hour linear marketing campaign is unfold throughout 16 totally different missions that each one observe the identical format. Every degree has a transparent begin and finish level with collectibles sprinkled alongside the way in which, damaged up by throngs of enemies that assail you till you get a dialogue break in the course of the subsequent cutscene. Whilst you’re technically free to discover ranges a bit to seek out lore objects or gold pouches, aka “bucks” for buying upgrades, the crux of your journey is strolling from one combat to the following and finally capping missions off with a boss battle. Happily, the environments between every fight encounter are actually sights to behold with sufficient picturesque backdrops that vary from the outlandish to the gorgeous to make even the grumpiest cowboy shed a tear.
The formulation of Evil West’s ranges isn’t combined up save for just a few distinctive conditions, similar to a wacky mine cart phase or the handful of instances you stroll across the base camp whereas being spoon fed exposition. Its story places you accountable for Jesse Rentier from The Rentier Institute, a corporation based by Jesse’s father to search out and eradicate all method of vampires and different foul beasts. Developer Flying Wild Hogs actually latched onto the entire “Wild West, however Bizarre” concept and ran away with it screaming. You’ve received Illuminati-esque floating pyramids, portals to hell, and demonic little women with skin-crawling voices. It’s a story riddled with entertaining expletives and actually distinct characters, such because the fiercely opinionated physician, Emilia Blackwell, so there’s by no means a uninteresting second – I simply want the story as an entire was extra subtle than Jesse merely chasing down some dangerous folks for revenge.
Over the course of Evil West you’ll regularly unlock new weapons, powers, and upgrades that alter Jesse’s talents in enjoyable new methods. For instance, you’ll be able to enhance the variety of pictures your pistol will get off in a single journal, increase your rifle with electrical injury, and even incorporate new talents like floor kilos and aerial combos to proceed evolving your arsenal. The best way fight is all the time increasing helps break up the in any other case monotonous layouts of Evil West’s ranges. There’s hardly ever a stretch of time longer than 20 minutes through which you gained’t both unlock a brand new potential, increase an current weapon with a contemporary impact, or discover a completely new gadget for dismembering enemies in wonderful methods.
Evil West on Steam Deck
Through the assessment interval, Evil West was nonetheless rated as “Unsupported” on Steam Deck, however that’s seemingly as a result of it simply hadn’t launched and been licensed but. Whereas I primarily performed on my desktop PC, I discovered I vastly most well-liked utilizing a gamepad over a mouse and keyboard. The UI is clearly designed to mirror a controller structure for fast reference and a few instructions, like pulling enemies in direction of you with the electrical gauntlet, really feel awkward on a keyboard.
To that finish, I made a decision to put in it on my Steam Deck (I’m utilizing the 512GB mannequin) and provides it a attempt anyway. It’s important to use the touchscreen or touchpad to put in some Unreal Engine supporting recordsdata on first launch, however after that it ran nice. It’s already optimized for controller assist so the entire UI converted to gamepad prompts instantly.
Efficiency was a bit all over at first. Frames dipped all the way down to the low 20s on Epic or Excessive settings, however after turning off movement blur (yuck), leaving on V-Sync, and reducing to Medium settings it was significantly better, hovering round 40-60 frames-per-second. In the end, I opted for setting a 40 FPS body restrict within the Steam Deck’s efficiency setting menu to get probably the most constant efficiency. That wasn’t so dangerous, although my RTX 2060 Tremendous desktop PC was in a position to play easily at 60 fps with no stutters on Excessive settings the overwhelming majority of the time.
Along with that fixed evolution, fight has a frantic circulation that feels nice in movement. You’ll be able to zoom throughout the map and stun enemies then rack up a melee combo, uppercut them into the air, and leap as much as smash them again down right into a pool of blood and guts. Or you’ll be able to cost up your rifle with a high-powered beam of electrical energy that ricochets between enemies earlier than unleashing your flamethrower to complete them off. It’s a daft choice of weaponry that’s simple to modify between on the fly since almost each piece of substances has its personal devoted button and cooldown timer – no ammo or bullets to maintain monitor of. You’ll be able to simply anticipate stuff to recharge whereas utilizing one thing else.
The one a part of the fight that did develop a bit uninteresting by the tip of Evil West was the shortage of enemy selection. Gradual-moving zombies with heavy wind up swings by no means pose a problem and even probably the most aggressive hulking monstrosities wielding shields lack oomph after the primary few fights. It will probably even be tough to inform what’s occurring throughout probably the most chaotic battles as a result of each enemy bleeds collectively (pun supposed) and so they all find yourself wanting like the identical tones of blood and dust. (It doesn’t assist that the notification arrow to let you recognize somebody is attacking is comparatively refined and straightforward to overlook within the thick of issues.)
Enemy reuse is especially noticeable in terms of bigger well being sponge enemies too, as Evil West likes to copy-paste baddies that had been as soon as bosses into later ranges as mini bosses. Typically these enemies even assault in packs on subsequent conferences, which is pure chaos and, admittedly, a real symphony of violence. However since each fight encounter is principally only a round enviornment you dodge and strafe round as you combat, that gaggle of huge well being bars might put on my endurance skinny after some time. With no leap button or selection in how fight encounters are laid out, each combat finally ends up feeling like the identical mushy puddle of goo even with the artistic arsenal at your disposal.
That doesn’t imply hopping round in that goo (gross) wasn’t enjoyable, it simply means that is merely the type of sport you boot up while you don’t need to suppose. It’s repetitive, predictable, and unoriginal in lots of methods, however I discovered myself not caring as a result of I used to be having fun with killing monsters a lot anyway. In that regard, Evil West shares lots of the identical DNA as Flying Wild Hog’s earlier chaotic motion romp, Shadow Warrior 3, even when the style is solely totally different – each video games double down on what issues most to obfuscate loads of different areas which are missing.
Evil West is a refreshing blast from the previous that nails crucial components of its old-school, vampire-hunting motion. The fight is clean and its weapon choices are ludicrously entertaining, however low enemy selection and overly related degree layouts can develop considerably monotonous after some time. That is removed from being probably the most advanced or modern motion sport I’ve performed, however on occasion you simply need to have some enjoyable smashing in monster skulls.