Unleash the cowboy of war – Evil West Quick Review
Four years ago, if you would have told me that at the end of 2022 I’d be playing a kick-ass game that’s a essentially a hybrid of the PlayStation 2- and 3-era God of War games and the Red Dead Redemption series, well, I would have told you to build me a time machine and get me to the end of 2022, STAT.
Evil West is the rather unassuming name of this game that I would risk bending time and space to play.
THE STORY
A dark menace (i.e., vampires doing vampire things) runs rampant across the plains of the Old West. Players are placed in the boots of a gun-slinging vampire killer named Jesse (of course), a rootin’-tootin’, monster-slayin’ superhero who fights these bloodthirsty atrocities with panache in visceral, explosive combat.
PLATFORMS
Evil West is out now on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S. I played the PC version, and it ran without a hitch or a glitch.
TIME PLAYED
I put about five hours into Evil West, and I easily could have put in five more without batting an eyelash. In that five hours, I played through the first three and a half levels of vampire slaying goodness.
WHAT’S AWESOME
• Just about everything, really. Pretty much from the instant I began until I put down the controller, I was smiling while playing Evil West…and that’s because, in my mind, this is what a current-gen action video game should be.
• Concise narrative. It has cutscenes and the like, but it doesn’t dwell on them long before you’re back in the fast, fluid, and well-controlled action.
• On-point combat. The combat is both super slick and fair: anytime I died I knew it was because I screwed up and not that the game was cheating or anything like that.
• Cool visuals. A cherry on top here is that everything looks fantastic in this steampunk version of the late 1800s that has a serious bloodsucker problem.
• I’ve got a plan, Arthur! The main character, Jesse, both looks and sounds like Arthur Morgan, the ill-fated protagonist from Red Dead Redemption II. Well, facially he reminds me of Arthur, but his clothes look like he stole them from Castlevania’s Belmont clan. It’s not the same voice actor, but he’s doing a damn fine Arthur impression in Evil West.
WHAT SUCKS
• No sniping? The first weird thing about the combat in Evil West is that you can’t pick off enemies from far off that you can literally see roaming about. You have to be in the “combat zone” to engage them properly and the game actually blocks your shots if you try to snipe them from afar.
• Obvious combat zones. In the vein of games like Gears of War, Mass Effect, and the aforementioned God of War, I could immediately tell from the level design of certain areas when I was headed into a fight. I’m sure some people dig this, or are comforted by these visual hints/clues, but I’d prefer surprises.
SHOULD YOU PLAY IT?
Definitely. If you don’t like Evil West then you don’t like fun…and I feel sorry for you. There’s an old saying about being a “man’s man” which essentially means that the person you are referring to is the epitome of masculinity. Well, to me, Evil West is a “video game’s video game”—it has everything that a top-notch game needs to be successful. Beyond a couple minor quibbles, I think it is the epitome of what an action video game should be in the twenty-first century. It deserves to succeed and not get lost in the overabundance of fantastic titles being released during the holiday season.
💬 Do you enjoy “hybrid” style games that meld other game concepts and/or genres into one cohesive whole? Let me know in the comments below!
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