REVIEW – Tending towards the style of the two previous console generations, Evil West came out with a result so tired that you could say it was 12-13 years out of date, which doesn’t take away from the fact that the game is fun at first, but in a short time, it becomes so dull that you regret everything.

A dark menace consumes the Old West. In solo or coop, fight with style in visceral, explosive combat against bloodthirsty monstrosities. Eradicate the vampiric hordes with your lightning-fueled gauntlet and become a Wild West Superhero.

Go west

These characters have a somewhat facetious (and the gaming industry-blaming) origin. It’s going to be a little extra couple of hundred characters: in principle, this article should be about something other than this game, as the email mentioned Weird West. However, that was already discussed. So it’s going to be about the Weird West instead of the Weird West, which could have been inspired by Darkwatch or Red Dead Redemption’s Undead Nightmare because they were also about cowboys fighting monsters. Here, it’s a third-person shooter with a more substantial steampunk influence so that we can kill our opponents with more varied technology. The result, on the surface, isn’t too bad, as we get a primarily good action game, of which there were plenty on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. If it had a better-written story to go with it, it could have made it past the seventh console generation, but alas, the story is cliché and boring.

The vampires want to take over the United States, and the government relies on our character, Jesse Rentier, who says little, and we wish he hadn’t because he would have been better off keeping quiet all along. At least then, he could punch the vampires because we’ll be doing a surprisingly high proportion of that, so it’ll be a frequent occurrence to send them flying with our metal gloves. It’s almost comical on a self-parodic level in how over-the-top the action is, but somehow it still seemed like the most enjoyable element of the game. Portal also makes an appearance, as you can use your gloves to pull the vampires towards you, stun them for a few seconds with the electric shock and then send them into the wall. It will be necessary, as they will always be outnumbered, making it a little difficult to hit their weak point, so some luck will depend on whether it is achieved. Our firearms (rifle, shotgun, revolver) can also be used in combos, as they can be activated with a button, but they have a cooldown, so you can’t shoot them indefinitely (so it’s worth switching between them). At least you don’t have to search for ammo for them in return. If you had to, the game’s already crackling situation would be even more problematic.

…or north

The game is about 9 hours long. It’s not an exaggeration to say that you’ll see everything Evil West has to offer in about three or four hours. That’s sad enough on its own because, sure, there are a lot of opponents, but once they start to get repetitive, the game doesn’t keep us in front of the screen. It can’t be innovative because it’s simple. If it had come out under the Call of Juarez IP in 2007, it would have been a success because it was typical then that the game doesn’t let you go any further but instead traps you in a small arena-like area, and you have to kill everyone to go further. Oh, and it’s very linear. That would have been fine in the old days, but it’s not enough now.

If only the game had at least been adequately tested, but even that wasn’t achieved: several times, several characters were halfway in the ground, sometimes the game thought it wanted to take a nap and crash, and several times an opponent seemed to have no hitbox… so they couldn’t be hit from time to time. We can’t imagine that this game was worked on by the same studio that made Trek to Yomi this year (and Shadow Warrior 3 was also better than it). Maybe the Polish team should have stuck with Hard Reset. And that’s without even mentioning the dialogue: on the one hand, not much is memorable, and on the other, what is extraordinary is the poor delivery. And the areas to explore are there, but there needs to be more motivation to go there. A recipe for disaster is represented in the rating that pops up at the bottom of these characters.

…or south

Evil West gets a four and a half out of ten because basic combat is excellent and appealing. If you’re playing co-operatively, it could go up to a six out of ten because you can have more fun with the bugs with someone else but not solo. Evil West (and we almost wrote Weird West again…) might be able to attract attention with its retro-ish atmosphere, but there’s a horde of better products in both genre and style waiting for players. This game is typical of the level that will be free on the Epic Games Store in a year because everyone will forget it. And that would be the best thing for everyone: to forget it as soon as possible. Because, as the name of the game accurately points out: this is the West being evil. It’s a waste of time. It would be better to live. Or to let live.

-V-

Publisher: Focus Entertainment

Developer: Flying Wild Hog

Style: TPS

Release: November 22, 2022.