Analysis of Evil West, a wild and tedious American West.

Evil West, the western third-person shooter that stayed halfway through almost everything.

There is a book that I really like Albert Espinosa entitled “EVERYTHING WE COULD HAVE BEEN YOU AND ME, IF WE ARE NOT YOU AND ME”. This sentence sums up my encounter with Bad West. To start with what touches me as a person with feelings and emotions: I was waiting for this title impatiently, perhaps with too much and with some expectations also too high. For this reason, after a first contact, I had to sharpen my objectivitytrying to be more objective than ever.

I took two steps back to see Title in perspective without thinking about what he wanted it to be. Thanks to that I managed to live Evil West as it is, and not as I expected. But still, I feel bad west It’s not the title that neither I nor many people wanted to end up with. Let’s start with the most informative; bad west is the latest title from Flying Wild Hog, creator of sagas like shadow warrior 1,2 and 3 or titles like hard reset redux or applaud them Hike to Yomi. A studio with a lot of travels.

Vampire and Wild West

In bad west we are the son of the founder of the institute reindeerjesse reindeer, and our mission as a country man is to fight vampires, Old West style. From the institute, however, other types of works more bureaucratic or creative. Although they also do all kinds of research, discoveries and weapon improvements to fight against this scourge that are “leeches”.

The the story It begins with a skirmish that will lead us to successfully execute one of the vampire leaders. However, they will quickly seek revenge. They will attack for surprise the institute and they will destroy it, reducing everything to ashes. Despite all this, we will manage to escape accompanied by a handful of collaborators who will be tasked with rebuilding the institute and being the country’s first line of defense against vampires.

An industrial and technological revolution

jesse reindeer is the typical cowboy who rides alone executing vampires, rude and not very talkative. Thus, our Evil West has as its protagonist a decaffeinated version of To clean Eastwood in one spaghetti western. All this in a context and an era that mixes the end of the far west with the beginning of the industrial revolution. intertwining guns and revolvers with the first electric weapons based on Faraday’s principles and laws. This mix works perfectly. We will move between environments as disparate as colonial mansions with electricity or deserted and abandoned wastelands that even the wind does not visit. So far everything is perfect, nothing impressive, but it’s more than compliant and the settingto me personally I like.

Good ideas without forging

All of those positive things, like the story and the setting, including the art design, start to fade from the first hours of play. bad west at his heel Achille in the technical part and it is more than obvious. I had read the game settings that this would bring:

In the fashion quality, the game runs at 4K resolution and 30 FPS, while in performance mode it runs at 1080p and 60 FPS. This in one X-Series. But being an old dog, I thought resolution and FPS wouldn’t be an issue, as A Plague Tale amply demonstrated: Requiem oh Gotham knights.

Analyze the two modes, quality there performance, the difference between the two modes is minimal in detail, shadows or on-screen elements. Just change the resolution. Playing in quality mode at 30 fps is, as the game says, hell. It’s going to take a lot of moving, dodging, rolling, aiming or shooting and at 30 fps, and with a fall out From the camera wrong executed, we will not see anything.

The scene becomes a stain. In addition, despite playback on an Oled C1 television, the performance of the HDR are horrible. On the stage we will have totally dark areas where you cannot see anything and at the same time other light areas burned by excess of clarity. It’s impossible to find a middle ground that allows you to play comfortably in both environments. nor change the gamma gaming or television.

an old game

A graphic level the game, on the other hand, does not appear to be from 2022. It looks like a title from 2015 that we play with fps boost. The details of the sets are poor, rigid and lifeless. Nothing has physics except things that can be shot at and there are few of them. A few dynamites, a rope, a target, but nothing else, you won’t be able to break the bottles, windows or glass you see on stage. In addition, the physics of enemies is rude there rough. The final enemies of each zone are very similar and not very detailed. Areas with water are blurry where textures break and stop working, revealing only a few sawtooth or Minecraft-like squares. The backgrounds aren’t overly detailed either. in a lot complexity. All this makes it less understood limited performance console gaming in terms of resolution and fps.

Variety of gameplay

The gameplay also chiaroscuro. On the one hand, Jesse Rentier, the “prota” has a crafted design there elaborate. It has many mechanics to eliminate enemies. With shots, punches, using the stage as an ally or the electric gauntlets that provide us with charges, links, stuns, etc… This makes the fights intense, varied and fun, but they are always the same. Let me explain. The pattern of levels of the game is taken from “first of Unreal 4”. That is to say, some scenarios very installmentsvery waterproof, which do not allow you to go back in the exploration. In addition to being too guided and linear. There’s a puzzle to solve to advance along the way, like rolling things or shooting them, to break through, but it’s all very simple and has been seen in 100 titles before.

Open field, battle ahead

When we arrive in a region More openof a square type, enemies will start coming that we will have to eliminate.
This mechanic is the one that is repeated all the time, to advance in a direct, resolve a blocked stage and eliminate enemies or the final boss in an area. There isn’t much else. Some walk in the footsteps of a minealso linear and heavily scripted.

To make matters worse, these ambushes are the hardest thing we’ll find in bad westsince bosses the ends on their part are very easy. They always run the same 3 or 4 mechanical cyclically without change. Almost all the bosses I passed to the first since they pose no challenge. However, the ambushes and waves of enemies cost me a lot more to defeat. This more than compensates for the gameplay and experience.

The game still has depthalthough through very hackneyed mechanics like talent trees or perks that will disappear unlock as we progress as if it were a Roleplayor by dollars that we will be picked up by the scene. We also have collectibles that will change the look of our cowboy and his weapons.

CONCLUSION

bad west It is a title with very good things and others less. Story-wise and directing, I fell in love like the launch trailers already were. However, the way to achieve it is more typical of a game from 5 years ago than being on the verge of NextGen. It must be assumed that studies have hardened into a thousand battles such as Flying wild pigThey must have more capacity for creation, innovation and above all optimization than that shown in bad west.

For those of you who have played Riders, Evil West is a bad DLC for the latter. Same mechanics, the same but less well executed, less open scenarios, less freedom and exploration and above all less worked. A game based on Unreal 4 very scriptand it doesn’t contribute anything to the genre beyond the setting which is 10. Many of these issues can be resolved by patches there updatesbut others reside in the base and concept of the game, so bad west I have only to repeat: “ALL THAT WE COULD HAVE BEEN YOU AND ME, IF WE WERE NOT YOU AND ME”.