Official Review PlayStation 5 Updated

Evil West (PlayStation 5)
Official GBAtemp Review

Name: Evil West
Item: Evil West
Rating: 6
Author: KiiWii

Product Information:

Release Date (EU): November 22, 2022
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Developer: Flying Wild Hog
Genres: Third-Person, Action
Also For: Computer, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S

Game Features:

Single player

Local Multiplayer

Online Multiplayer

Co-operative

For anyone wondering: Evil West is undoubtedly no Red Dead wannabe, but it certainly is an Undead Nightmare..

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Evil West forges an alternate telling of 19th-century America's foray into the.. west.. with an ultra-violent Vampire heavy slant. It's like Blade and Wild Wild West spawned this no-nonsense action game.

Starting out you are met with a pretty a-typical neck-biting narrative, with the protagonist, Jesse Rentier, the last bastion of an ancient vampire-hunting organisation known as the Rentier Institute, tasked with protecting the American frontier and uncovering the ensuing mysteries surrounding his father and the monsterous rise of the foul-bloods.

The basics are that you have a gun, your fists and your trusty spur-clad boot to dispatch foes. You are awarded upgrades and perks that enhance your playstyle by offering you a secondary weapon, a powerful gauntlet glove, electrical enhancements for your gauntlet and improved cool-down and reload speeds.

Filling out your skill-tree and increasing your arsenal requires levelling up and buying upgrades with found plunder, luckily there are bodies to loot and glowing gold filled chests to smash open along the way to put towards something new every now and again.

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The primary and quite basic gist of the game is to follow the funnelling path until you get to a closed-off arena section, smash seven shades out of the enemies, and then rinse and repeat. While the game is not open-world, it constantly feels like it should have been more spacious and less linear. For example, you have to use your lasso to swing across chasms, or pull various switches or items, duck under low obstructions, squeeze through tight spaces, or vault over obstacles, but that comprises of just hitting the Cross button to interact and perform the action; nothing much cranial going on here.

In one notable section, there is a gap in a fence about a meter or so wide that obviously leads to the next area that you need to progress into. However, you cannot walk through that gap, no that would be too obvious; it has an invisible wall holding you back. Instead, you must vault over the section of the fence a couple of feet away from that gap, to get exactly where you would have gotten to had you been allowed to walk through the obvious space.. it makes zero sense! Perhaps there is a model missing there, or something hasn't loaded in properly, but from a gameplay perspective, it's confusing design language that makes simple navigation that little bit more frustrating.

The art direction of the game is a mixture of moderately-realistic backgrounds and cartoony, dark cell-shaded-ish characters. The result of which can be a little muddy at times with the uber-dark, gritty lighting options the developers have taken. At times I really hated the dark-dingy look of this game, struggling to make head-nor-tail of what was the floor and what was the wall (it was so murky). Other times I applauded the mixture of B-Movie hammer-horror blended with spaghetti western environments, flung together with neon-glowing electrical-skeletal animations when you blast your foes with a squillion volts, and then punch them to smithereens.

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Grunts generally look superb, with animated viscera hanging off, and plenty of small details like chains or material on each one; but then you hit waves of them and realise every single one within its class is identical, which is fine, I guess, but a little variety or personality would have been more aesthetically pleasing while you're pulverising them.

The next tier of grunts, tanks, similarly look cool, and wield big ferocious axes, and sadly also only have one look to them. Moving up to Familiars, the vampire's human pets/followers, these also share traits with the other monstrous members of the horde, but this time have alternate weapons, a hammer rather than an axe for example... eurgh..

While enemies have torrents of blood coursing around their undead/familiar bodies for you to release, the corpses don't pile up, and the effects used in-game are very superficial and can break immersion.

Water effects (specifically the specular reflections) aren't realistic in the slightest, with stagnant completely still bodies of water reflecting ripple patterns that simply wouldn't exist in reality. Internal lighting effects look a heck of a lot better than external ones in my opinion, with the Institute showing off some superb-looking lighting bouncing off the highly textured, bump-map-looking floors, glass effects looking refractive and chunky, and a generally more subtle and more aesthetically pleasing look to interiors texturing and appearance overall.

The character himself uses a stylised shader effect, sure, but when you're in a cave or crevasse you sometimes see his foot lit as if an extremely light source is directly behind you, or the opposite side of your body is lit up to where the light source suggests it is coming from, all while in actuality you are in virtual darkness and there should be no illumination in those places.

I really enjoyed the dead-eye style reflex-shooting, the electric-shocker effects of the gauntlet are a great touch, and the finishing moves, while repetitive, are fun to watch initially: I can't help but detest the combat systems method of using your melee boot to interrupt any enemy attacks, even typically unblockable yellow flashing ones.

What this means is that you can simply punch, kick, punch, kick, to get past any of the main fodder enemies in-game without taking any damage whatsoever, with no timing necessary and essentially: no skill required.

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The boss battles are where I really enjoyed the challenge spikes, and the presentation reminded me a little of House of the Dead 2 in places, with the flying enemies paired with the gigantic boss rushing you whilst you dodge and counter the onslaught of projectiles.

The battles force you to step up your game in terms of running and gunning simple foes, into dodging, avoiding, and targetting certain aspects of the big bad boys, or constantly hammering them in order to expose their weak spots in order to slay them successfully, either way, if you swat up on the lore within your pause menu, you can identify enemy weaknesses even quicker, and inflict maximum damage without having to put in much leg work at all.

The boss battles are easily the best parts of this game, it's just a shame that there are only four main boss fights across the 16 missions. The mini-bosses that punctuate the game are good at first fight, but sadly become repetitive in places very quickly.

Variety is truly the spice of life that this game is missing.

Cooperative play is a nice touch, but what on Earth is up with both players playing as Jessie? Why with such a rich cast of possible players would the developers pull an ultra-cheap move and basically allow you to only play as recoloured versions of the same character? I barely played this mode to be honest, mainly because it just felt tacked on and also because it was kind of pointless for the second player: they couldn't save progress! Only the host gets to save the game. Pointless.

I have to admit that Evil West has its appeal in places, but it's honestly a very shallow title in terms of tasks and content. Beyond the running, punching, and gunning you have a couple of rather obvious targets to shoot in places in order to progress, batteries and small stashes of hidden cash to locate to further your adventure. If you like 'em simple, then this is the game for you.

The glaring issues with this title are that it's linear as hell, you cannot craft anything, navigation is annoying in places, if you play co-op you both play as the same character, and you technically cannot even manually reload your gun yourself!

Other issues stem from the engine itself, I noticed a lot of grainy textures in motion, glitchy patchy squares of "blur" appearing around the outline of the character when turning the camera around them, and big white flickery artefacts appearing when running around interior environments. I actually feared that my GFX card was on its way out or something, but I was able to replicate it by wandering around the museum areas and turning the camera around in dark areas. Big white rectangles appear across your peripheral vision, which is completely out of place and definitely not programmed to appear on purpose; it's a big annoying visual bug that mars otherwise nice interior environmental design, with great reflections and lighting, and stylised visuals on the characters and enemies.

Evil West is a title that could be great, should be great, but sadly lacks fineness on what would otherwise be a gritty action-adventure game for those with a penchant for cowboys, vampires and gore. Worth a pickup if you have nothing better to play, but £45 could be better spent on something more fleshed out and well-polished in my honest opinion. Wait for the post Xmas sales!

Verdict

What We Liked ...

Beat 'em up action with a hammer horror twist
Nice skill tree to populate
Dead-eye hip-shooting is nice whilst horde pummelling

What We Didn't Like ...

Tedious and repetitive in places
Muddy looking, artefacts and stutters in places
Co-op is tacked on and pointless for the second player

Gameplay

As 3D beat 'em ups go this is an easy game to get into, but it doesn't offer much depth for hardcore players. A lack of substance makes me score Evil West lower than I had initially hoped.

Presentation

Stuttery in places, weird flickery artefacts around the player in indoor environments, muddy visuals, and a very dark aesthetic makes Evil West tough to love.

Lasting Appeal

It's fun at first, sure, but is it something I will go back to? Sadly not, even in co-op mode.

out of 10

Overall

Evil West is a basic game for basic players. There are no taxing puzzles, no major hurdles to overcome, and no massive pull for me to replay it now it's done. While it can be semi-enjoyable in places, overall Evil West is a disappointingly unremarkable experience in my opinion.

Reactions: Randqalan and Prans

Reploid
Dec 28, 2022

666... Sounds evil enough.

Reactions: 64bitmodels and OM3GAZX

Fithos
Jan 9, 2023

Gameplay should be atleast 8. It's lots of fun and you can fo a combination of things to defeat your enemies. Progression is also good which keeps you moving forward, curious on what tools or upgrade will you get next. Obviously you did not grow up with this type of games during the ps2 and xbox360/ps3 era.

Another thing, presentation on my end since I am playing on pc with max out settings and high frame rate is a 9. Beautiful graphics and did not experience any bugs and glitches with fps constantly high.

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