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- Sometimes you just want to smash in some monster skulls.
- Evil West Steam Screenshots
- Evil West on Steam Deck
- What do you think would be easiest to kill in a fist fight?
- Notable Western Games
- Verdict
By David Jagneaux
Updated: Nov 23, 2022 7:30 am
Posted: Nov 21, 2022 7:00 pm
When I think about what the real world would be like if it were overrun by vampires, werewolves, and zombie-like shambling corpses, that imaginary apocalypse doesn’t evoke nearly as much maniacal cackling from me as the one in Evil West. From the Tesla-inspired electricity weapons to the gratuitous gore and bloodshed, this old-school action game was some of the most fun monster murdering I’ve done in a while – unfortunately, its formulaic structure also make it some of the most repetitive.
The formula of Evil West’s levels is rarely mixed up save for a few unique situations, such as a wacky mine cart segment or the handful of times you walk around the base camp while being spoon fed exposition. Its story puts you in control of Jesse Rentier from The Rentier Institute, an organization founded by Jesse’s father to hunt down and eradicate all manner of vampires and other foul beasts. Developer Flying Wild Hogs really latched onto the whole “Wild West, but Weird” idea and ran away with it screaming. You’ve got Illuminati-esque floating pyramids, portals to hell, and demonic little girls with skin-crawling voices. It’s a tale riddled with entertaining expletives and truly distinct characters, such as the fiercely opinionated doctor, Emilia Blackwell, so there’s never a dull moment – I just wish the story as a whole was more sophisticated than Jesse simply chasing down some bad people for revenge.
Over the course of Evil West you’ll gradually unlock new weapons, powers, and upgrades that alter Jesse’s abilities in fun new ways. For example, you can increase the number of shots your pistol gets off in a single magazine, augment your rifle with electrical damage, and even incorporate new abilities like ground pounds and aerial combos to continue evolving your arsenal. The way combat is always expanding helps break up the otherwise monotonous layouts of Evil West’s levels. There is rarely a stretch of time longer than 20 minutes in which you won’t either unlock a new ability, augment an existing weapon with a fresh effect, or find an entirely new gadget for dismembering enemies in glorious ways.
During the review period, Evil West was still rated as “Unsupported” on Steam Deck, but that’s likely because it just hadn’t released and been certified yet. While I primarily played on my desktop PC, I found I vastly preferred using a gamepad over a mouse and keyboard. The UI is clearly designed to reflect a controller layout for quick reference and some commands, like pulling enemies towards you with the electric gauntlet, feel awkward on a keyboard.
To that end, I decided to install it on my Steam Deck (I’m using the 512GB model) and give it a try anyway. You have to use the touchscreen or touchpad to install some Unreal Engine supporting files on first launch, but after that it ran great. It’s already optimized for controller support so all of the UI switched over to gamepad prompts immediately.
Performance was a bit all over the place at first. Frames dipped down to the low 20s on Epic or High settings, but after turning off motion blur (yuck), leaving on V-Sync, and lowering to Medium settings it was much better, hovering around 40-60 frames-per-second. Ultimately, I opted for setting a 40 FPS frame limit in the Steam Deck’s performance setting menu to get the most consistent performance. That wasn’t so bad, though my RTX 2060 Super desktop PC was able to play smoothly at 60 fps with no stutters on High settings the vast majority of the time.
In addition to that constant evolution, combat has a frantic flow that feels great in motion. You can zoom across the map and stun enemies then rack up a melee combo, uppercut them into the air, and jump up to smash them back down into a pool of blood and guts. Or you can charge up your rifle with a high-powered beam of electricity that ricochets between enemies before unleashing your flamethrower to finish them off. It’s a ludicrous selection of weaponry that’s easy to switch between on the fly since nearly every piece of gear has its own dedicated button and cooldown timer – no ammo or bullets to keep track of. You can just wait for stuff to recharge while using something else.
Here's a selection of video games set in the American West, through the ages.
That doesn’t mean hopping around in that goo (gross) wasn’t fun, it just means this is simply the kind of game you boot up when you don’t want to think. It’s repetitive, predictable, and unoriginal in a lot of ways, but I found myself not caring because I was enjoying killing monsters so much anyway. In that regard, Evil West shares a lot of the same DNA as Flying Wild Hog’s previous chaotic action romp, Shadow Warrior 3, even if the genre is entirely different – both games double down on what matters most to obfuscate plenty of other areas that are lacking.
Evil West is a refreshing blast from the past that nails the most important parts of its old-school, vampire-hunting action. The combat is smooth and its weapon options are ludicrously entertaining, but low enemy variety and overly similar level layouts can grow somewhat monotonous after a while. This is far from being the most complex or innovativ...
- David Jagneaux
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Feb 25, 2022 · Elden Ring. View All Platforms. Released On: Feb 25, 2022. Metascore Universal Acclaim Based on 93 Critic Reviews. 96. User Score Generally Favorable Based on 15,566 User Ratings. 8.0. My Score. Hover and click to give a rating. Add My Review.
