In an interview with director Quentin Tarantino in the early 2000s, a conservative pundit decried the horrific level of violence in his films.Their impassioned pleas questioning the need for violence were met with ridicule and frustration: “Because it’s had a great time,simple. do you understand?
I was playing and thinking about that interview evil west, the new game from shooter master from Polish studio Flying Wild Hog. Evil West is an old-school action game that blends melee combat and guns; a hybrid you don’t often see in the modern era.
Set in an alternate version of America’s Wild West frontier, the story follows a clandestine vampire-hunting organization that has been responding to an ever-changing threat for generations while the government conceals their discovery as a viral outbreak.
It’s a silly game, and it knows it, often reveling in its love of human-versus-monster violence.
This setup exists only as a reason to introduce a series of monsters that you can counter with era-appropriate weapons–they’ll most likely be zombies or aliens. It also allows a lot of freedom to use technology around the world. If you’re okay with vampires that exist, you’re probably outfitting your lever-action rifle with electricity-infused gloves and an upgraded railgun.
This is the best and worst of Evil West. When you’re done watching a cutscene, you’re thrown into restricted levels made up of clear encounter areas, quiet areas where you can hunt for collectibles, and the occasional puzzle between you and entering the two areas.
While the level layout isn’t always predictable, how you navigate it is. so painful. Just like games from the Xbox 360 generation, the designers want you to move through these levels in a certain way: if they say you can’t step over this log, you can’t. If they decide you can easily jump between rocks to reach the dangling chain, your character will play a fixed animation for doing so. You’re never free to choose how you want to explore the world, except for one quest.
To make matters worse, the game doesn’t know which areas will lock you and which will send you back the way you came. I usually like to exhaust all possible routes in a level before heading to the main objective, but you rarely know which is which in Evil West. The same place that lets you cover one way can dictate that you can’t cover another. Either due to a bug, or the expected behavior of the game can make a mission frustrating. It’s like the game doesn’t want you to spend too long wandering around. Although it hides secrets.
I don’t necessarily find it unpleasant that Evil West’s levels are linear, it’s the way you’re allowed/not allowed to move through them that’s inexplicable. Doom 2016 and its sequels take a similar approach to level design; you know when you’re going to fight and when you’re going to be left to your own devices. But those games make you “fail”; they make you chase dead ends and end up somewhere you can’t visit because you haven’t made some sort of upgrade.
Evil West railways you’re too much for it to feel anything but Video games; one that hides an ancient core beneath its modern visuals.
The redeeming quality of Evil West — and the one thing that makes or breaks for many players — is combat. It’s also a well-thought-out component of the game, which adds excitement and difficulty throughout.
Things start simple; you can slam like a cannonball, juggle and hurl enemies at conveniently placed TNT caches and spikes. It doesn’t take long before you’re learning to use your rifle for long-range shots and quickly flap your revolver’s hammer to take out enemies that get too close.
Later on, you’ll learn about a double-barreled shotgun, which can be an effective addition to your primary arsenal. The ammo is constantly recharged, so you have very little to worry about reloading. The way the buttons are mapped (at least on the controller) is intuitive and helps make the action flow. The right trigger fires the revolver by default, using lever action if you’re aiming. It takes the stress off your brain and transfers it to your fingers.
Evil West managed to keep all the toys fresh in its relatively short runtime by handing them out one by one. When playing the game, you’ll see some elements on the HUD lock up, indicating that something will fill them at some point. This makes combat fun, because you know there will be some goodies unlocked later to give you an advantage. It also gives you plenty of time to familiarize yourself with what you already have, and to chart a path through their respective upgrade trees.
Every primary weapon can be upgraded using money earned from upgrading, and is scattered around the world in stashes, chests, and… the bodies of some hanged people you come across. Character upgrades are earned through perks, and there are a limited number of perk points available.
Overall, some upgrades provide noticeable linear improvements, while others allow for more meaningful changes to your tracks. Considering you have more perk slots than points, Evil West does the right thing by giving you the freedom to respec – and early in the game too.
Combat flow is one area that could benefit from some post-launch work, though. There are different factors at play that can make things unnecessarily confusing, especially as you take on different types of enemies, each of which requires a specific approach to take down.
Feeds can be thrown at larger opponents, easily interrupted by your Shock Gloves, and stunned quickly. This opened up a Doom-like glory kill for them.
However, larger enemies actually have layers of defense that you need to rip through. Depending on the enemy, you might need to destroy the shield before doing any real damage, while others swing their weapons so fast you’ll need to interrupt them with kicks to keep their damage in check.
When you’re teetering on the brink of death waiting to regain your healing abilities, some encounters can be thrilling. Others test physical strength more than anything else, and kill that momentum. Constantly trying to dodge off-screen projectiles while dealing with three shielded enemies pushing you into corners…it’s the exact opposite of the electroshock action elsewhere.
Having played the entire game solo, I felt that some of the combat was balanced with co-op in mind. The same is true for certain bosses, but the game mercifully checks each boss stage. Outside of bosses, the autosave frequency is unusually erratic. The game will tell you how long it has autosaved, which, while welcome, exposes a problem.
Evil West doesn’t save as often as you think at all, I often keep playing just to get to the next cutscene or big moment because I don’t want to repeat the last 12 minutes or so.
It’s these issues and convoluted design decisions that add unnecessary friction to a game with this style of action.
It took me about 13 hours to see the credits, missing half a dozen or so collectibles. If you’re looking for every bag of money or piece of knowledge, I think you’ll need an hour or so to go through it. I’m more and more drawn to shorter games these days, but I doubt everyone interested in Evil West will see it that way. However, Flying Wild Hog apparently wants you to replay every level.
You can easily restart missions from the menu, and the game clearly shows which collectibles you missed so you can go back and get them. I think people who are attracted to the game’s combat will choose the New Game+ game, or start the game on a higher difficulty in a separate save slot.
If you manage to convince a friend to buy it, you can play the game together in co-op mode, but there’s no matchmaking or crossplay, so your only option is to pull a friend and buy something that isn’t cheap. That’s already a hard sell, especially when you learn that only the mainframe can make progress.
Whatever your opinion of Evil West, the asking price of $50/$60 is too much for what’s on offer: the very nature of its level design, limited enemy variety, and memorable story get in the way of your enjoyment, Even if you’re only there to fight. As appealing as it is, the action doesn’t make up for Evil West’s shortcomings elsewhere.
Wicked West opens tomorrow, November 22.
Test version: PC. Check out the code provided by the publisher. Also works with PS4, PS5, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S.
