Relying on how outdated you’re, you may bear in mind the idea of “The Weekend Recreation,” as within the title you rented or borrowed from a good friend and beat in like 2 or 3 sittings between Friday and Sunday. And that was it. Perhaps you replay just a few ranges to seize some collectibles, however nothing greater than that. You had fun, noticed the credit roll, and moved on. Western-horror hybrid Evil West, out tomorrow, feels like a weekend recreation. In a world crammed with ongoing updates, advanced endgames, lengthy battle passes, and countless loot, it’s been good enjoying one thing linear, easy, and enjoyable.
Developed by Flying Wild Hog, Evil West is a third-person action-adventure recreation set in an alt-history model of the basic Wild West period of America. In contrast to actuality, this model options much more vampires, steampunk-like equipment, and magic. Evil West stars Jesse Reitner, a person that appears so much like Arthur Morgan from Pink Useless Redemption II.
As a part of the high-tech and secretive Reitner Institute (based by his father) Jesse fights off evil monsters, vampires, and different creatures of the evening to assist maintain the nation protected. However when a brand new kind of vampire arrives and begins creating a large, hard-to-kill military of undead bloodsuckers, Jesse and his associates are the few who can cease them and save the day.
There isn’t a getting round it: Evil West is foolish, however in a great way. Its narrative has so much in widespread with the very best B-movies and pulp tales from the previous. Characters act extra like individuals pretending to be individuals, than actual people. Dialogue is crammed with swear phrases and exposition. All of it’s tacky and foolish within the good form of method. Mixed with the steampunk devices, monsters, and violence, it actually does play out like a grindhouse flick you might need caught on TV at like 2 am again within the 90s on TNT.
One key power in Evil West’s favor is that it’s a very good motion recreation, mixing fast-paced melee fight with precision gunplay the place you combo all the pieces collectively. While you begin Evil West, the sport actually focuses on instructing you every new ingredient, slowly constructing you right into a vampire-killing machine. That is good as there’s so much to study and by the top, you’ll be juggling just a few completely different weapons and units throughout a few of the more durable fight encounters. Frustratingly, I did discover a few fights on the finish that acquired actually onerous, so be ready for some problem spikes.
For a western-themed recreation, it is likely to be stunning that the star of the present isn’t a revolver or rifle—although they’re each are good and helpful right here—as a substitute, it’s the silly-looking gauntlet Jessie wears. This factor is nice. You should use it to electrically yank over enemies, stun them, ship them flying into different monsters or off cliffs, and extra. As you improve Jesse you achieve entry to extra electrical assaults and counters, finally changing into a one-man, lightning-spewing, vampire-killing military in a trenchcoat. And no, it doesn’t make a lot sense how this gauntlet can achieve this a lot, however who cares. It matches completely on this B-movie world and universe. It is also one other piece of Evil West that jogs my memory of these PS2 video games of outdated. Video games that had been extra involved about enjoyable over making an attempt to make all the pieces really feel practical or logical.
However what actually helped me fall in love with Evil West isn’t the heavy, strong fight. Nor was it the horror-infused western vistas and places, although these are good, too. No, what I really like about Evil West is that it’s only a (Hank Hill voice) easy, honest-to-god, linear and enjoyable, goddamn online game. There’s no battle go or microtransactions. No crafting and no loot to gather, improve or commerce. No MMO-lite options or different gamers working round doing issues. No copy-paste aspect quests or large, however empty open worlds.
It’s a 16-mission linear motion recreation with some easy ability timber to make your character higher and that’s it. Most gamers will beat it in about 11-13 hours. This may look like a bizarre factor to reward, however in impact stripping out all of the superficial components you come to anticipate out of recent video games signifies that Evil West hones in on what it does greatest, somewhat than increase past its strengths.
Certain, should you look intently, you’ll discover the seams and corners that had been minimize in Evil West, seemingly as a consequence of its smaller price range in comparison with different single-player motion video games like God of Struggle. Characters outdoors of cutscenes don’t transfer their lips after they speak, audio high quality can typically dip, and ranges solely look good should you don’t poke round home windows to see past the linear space of the mission. However the place it issues, Evil West works nice. Taking part in on PS5, I ran the sport in its efficiency mode and located a rock-solid 60fps expertise, with only some dips throughout one explicit second in a single late-game mission. Digital camera and motion controls are responsive and work high quality always. This is likely to be a price range recreation, however Flying Wild Hog spent the cash in the suitable locations.
For me, Evil West is the form of recreation I miss lately. I’ll totally admit, I really like video games like Future and Fortnite, video games that by no means finish and are crammed with battle passes, crafting, loot, and many others. These video games can present hours of enjoyable and are nice to play whereas chilling with associates or listening to a podcast. However I don’t need all the pieces to be a fancy, all-encompassing, time-monopolizing social expertise that continues to develop and evolve as time goes on. And Evil West is a superb instance of the form of video games I would like extra of shifting ahead. Not all the pieces wants an endgame or a crafting desk. Typically, I simply wish to transfer ahead, hear some unhealthy banter and punch some monsters within the face for just a few hours. And Evil West gave me precisely that. No extra. No much less.