![]() ![]() It’s a game about steampunk cowboys punching giant vampires to death, and when you ride that wave of cheesy microwaved goodness, the result is an old-school adventure game that feels like a breath of fresh air compared to bigger, pricier games.There are plenty of shooters out there and each tries to develop their own identity without borrowing from their predecessors too much. Sure, the voice acting in the game is pretty terrible – not a single character sounds the way you’d expect them to, and hardly anyone leans into the camp cheesiness of the world – and the story is filled with as many half-baked moments as it is with zany, out-of-left-field twists, but then Evil West isn’t trying to deliver a mind-bending narrative epic. There are flaws with Evil West, but it’s hard to prioritize them over the fun of demolishing vampires with a giant lightning gauntlet. ![]() Exploring the nooks and crannies of each stage will let you find some bonus bucks or lore entries, but you’ll also find unique treasure chests that grant you extra perks – oddly enough, you still need to actually spend a point on unlocking these newly found perks, which dilutes the excitement of finding them. You can turn your revolver bullets into ricocheting energy blasts, or convert your electric-batteries into health buffs. Looking at a skill tree in an action game usually fills me with a sense of overwhelming dread, but the upgrade tree in Evil West is simple enough to not feel overwhelming, and stacked with upgrades that feel like meaningful changes rather than minuscule stat changes. There isn’t a fluid ballet of combat combos at play in Evil West that rivals games like Bayonetta 3, but the variety of tools at your disposal and the way each enemy often has a specific weakness worth targeting ensures that combat never gets old.Īs well as uncovering new weapons as you progress through the dozen-ish hours of Evil West’s campaign, you’ll spend currency on weapon upgrades and perk points on a skill tree. You’ve got some close-ranged weaponry to rely on as well, from a boomstick and a trusty revolver, to some more basic ranged weaponry like a hunting rifle, and even a flamethrower.Įach weapon is slotted to a different button on the controller, so it’s easy to mash out gauntlet-punches with the right bumper, suspend an enemy in mid-air with revolver shots off the right trigger, and then turn around and aim down the sights of your rifle with the left trigger in one fluid motion. At the core of your arsenal is a supercharged gauntlet capable of heavy strikes, lightning-arced stun combos, mid-air launchers and more. Evil West is beefy, blood-filled brawler not too unlike the modern God of War games. When the environment is legible, though, battling these beasts is a delight. ![]() In one combat arena, I had trouble even discerning my targets from the background with how splashed in red and black the whole stage was. It’s unfortunate that the environment art doesn’t always do these wild creatures justice – Evil West lays it on thick with environmental lighting and dark shadows, leading to levels that involve raging fire or demonic red auras being barely decipherable as the whole screen is caked in fluorescent reds and pitch blacks. Bosses are full of visual variety too, sometimes arriving as eight-foot vampiric titans and other times taking the form of colossal worm beasts. Some enemies are hairless, fleshy vampire beasts, while others are shambling hives of ooze or flying, projectile-spitting flesh faeries. You aren’t just fighting run-of-the-mill cloaked Draculas – the threats in Evil West are grotesque and inhuman, and it soon becomes clear that there’s something much darker than just vampires lurking in the shadows of this alternate history America. Monster designs are refreshingly unique, too.
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