Evil West Review
Played on Xbox Series X
Developed by Flying Wild Hog
Released 22nd November 2022
In 2022, Flying Wild Hog seemingly had their gears pumping as they released a total of 4 games that year. 'Shadow Warrior 3', 'Trek To Yomi', 'Space Punks' and 'Evil West'. The first 2, which I have already played and gave them a 'MEDIOCRE' and 'SUBPAR' rating, respectively, while 'Space Punks' had shut down its multiplayer servers before ever even releasing. So where does that leave 'Evil West'? Many people adore this title and credit its combo systems, level design and corniness as the righteous way back to when video games were short and fun joyrides in the late 2000s/early 2010s. Yet, for me, this is just another game in a year full of ill-fated releases for Flying Wild Hog.
Story
Narratively, 'Evil West' is a pool of creative decisions worn out by the poorly-written characters or dull executions of certain story beats. The basics of the plot are that you play Jesse Rentier, an agent for the vampire-hunting organisation, in a wild-west setting where said vampires are gearing up for an all-out war against the American government. Vampires, cowboys and steampunk-esque technology to combat the monsters is quite a fascinating concept and is what intrigued me back in 2022 when the announcement trailer came out (that and the crazy visual effects of lightning and blood splatter).
However, the pacing here is quite flat. The whole time, it felt like the story was building up to something without any payoff until the very end, which itself felt quite rushed and filled with an avalanche worth of corniness as the President congratulated you, and your "team" pull of this "we did it guys, we did it together" energy that completely soured my experience. It just feels like nothing of interest happens throughout, and when something worthy of intrigue is about to happen, a lacklustre excuse is thrown in to derail that anticipation. It ended up making each mission feel strung along for convenience's sake rather than an ongoing purpose. This fault is quite harmless early on in the 11-hour campaign, but anything after the invasion of the manor, the game narratively clumps up without knowing what to do next. The positives here, like the clever and interesting reinvention of the vampires simply being another animal species rather than a supernatural force, are fine at best. It's not like this story is terrible or insufferable, but it just doesn't have anything that magnetises you and, as a result, comes up as a whole bundle of nothing.
Gameplay
The gameplay consisted of some decent action that was very clearly not playtested. 'Evil West' uses a third-person over-the-shoulder perspective with similar combat to that of 'God of War (2018)', which was one of the inspirations for the game during development. From here, the player can punch the ever-living crap out of the enemies ahead of them, shoot them using the various guns that they unlock throughout, and use other utilities like an AOE (area of effect) flash stun.
The melee options here are ok. You'll mostly be spamming the single attack button when fighting the various enemies. That's right; there is no light or heavy, just regular attack. The regular attack does have many openers to its combos, like sprinting and holding the input, which will result in uppercutting the enemy and cannonballing them into a trap or explosive. Holding the input mid-combo will result in them being uppercut and available for juggling, and this doesn't include the wildly entertaining Zapper, which lets you dash or drag enemies towards you, not limited to its multiple upgrades that unlock the options of pulling enemies into the ground or performing ground pounds on them. However, even with all of these, the game becomes quite bland in the melee department. Most of the time, you'll spend it dashing towards the enemies and pulling off the multi-hit combo that comes guaranteed with the Zapper, then rinse and repeat. Occasionally, you'll have to employ other tactics like the cannonball strike, but the lack of options for a melee-centric game felt odd. Having the held inputs and sprinting/standing beginnings to combos by this point in the gaming world is a standard, not a bonus. It would've benefitted from a light and heavy set of attacks, as just one type makes the whole ordeal repetitive.
When the Zapper gets introduced about a third of the way into the game, it does add a new level of aggression and defence that you could use as you're able to parry, block and dash, but with how these combat encounters are designed, it doesn't really mean much as you'll mostly just roll around before hitting that dash-punch combo anyway. The game does feature a posture/stance break system where certain enemies will need to be punched up quite a bit before you could zap over to them like a regular enemy, and while that's fine for bossfights or occasional battles, the game tends to over-rely on this for future fights as a way to inflate the "challenge" present in the arena.
Unfortunately, the same could be said about your ranged arsenal. Sporting a rifle, minigun, revolvers, flamethrower, shotgun and crossbow, all at a single input away from use, these guns do feel great with solid recoil, and the Zapper upgrades for each are immaculate, making them even more useful than before. But they fall into the same state of monotony as you'll rarely use anything other than the rifle, shotgun or revolver because of their quick, high-damage that is at a short cooldown's disposal. The other firearms feel more like conditional uses that the game will nudge you into using, like making the way forward only accessible by burning the bushes with the flamethrower. Besides these, you'll also have a self-heal, AOE Stun and some dynamite. Simple, effective and must-uses in every fight - good design and execution here.
However, the same can't be said about the enemy encounters. Outside of the unchangingness of the combat, my main critiques lie within how each encounter is designed, and since I played and beat the game on the Hard difficulty, you can take this part of the review with a grain of salt if you want to. The enemies are quite troublesome. To start with the positives, the variety here is commendable. A shieldbearer, explosive runner, an evasive and slowing stalker and more. You've certainly encountered these enemy types in similar action games before, but they haven't been done a disservice here, striking a decent balance of needing to stun, dodge, and attack that makes individual fights fun.
What the main issue is, however, is when they're put together. Encounters could range from not having to take a single bit of damage to being stuck in a single area because the enemies and their quantities were not chosen carefully but rather got thrown in a random number generator. There's a huge difference between juggling multiple enemies with differing tactics and dealing with massively contrasting enemies that are too much for you to split your attention between, making so many fights feel not playtested, let alone thought out. If there was a clearer indicator like in 'God of War (2018)', that alerts you of an enemy being behind you, then maybe this wouldn't be so bad, but without it, you're forced to have to back away into the corner of every arena to keep watch on the several enemies present or risk being ganked on. What makes this worse is how every enemy besides the basic ones were damage sponges throughout. In other words, the challenge here (at least on Hard) felt more like it was subject to stat differences more than anything else.
The level design was another part of these fights that was lacking in focus. Each level consists of 3-5 big open space areas that funnel in waves of enemies, being strung up with linear ways of progressing. While I don't mind the linear progression, this encounter-to-encounter structure made for the combat to become repetitive at increasingly fast rates as there wasn't anything else to break the momentum up with, which would've been fine had the core combat been diversified. The occasional hidden treasures and off-beat paths were nice but not enough to fix this. This is less of a flaw in itself, as I really didn't mind this layout, but it's the fact that it inadvertently weakens other parts of the game that worsens my opinion of it. There was one chapter that I liked the layout of in which you had to help a village out and clear their vampiric presence. To do so, in a semi-open progression, you had to wander around the town destroying the vampire nests with encounters located throughout in a nicely paced manner. Unfortunately, this never gets replicated.
As for the upgrades of the game, which I've mentioned a few times so far, they're a great balance between the standard stat boost options, like an extra round in the gun's chamber, and the properly creative ones, like having full invulnerability when using the minigun, or your shotgun shooting out bouncing tesla balls. I'm a huge sucker for upgrades like these, so while I was getting sick of the gameplay loop, it's nice that I was still able to enjoy elements of it.
But the big question is, is this game worth it? Based purely on the gameplay, no. Nowadays, there are so many titles that are similar to each other, and even though 'Evil West' does stand out a little bit with its entourage of vampire threats and the satisfying Zapper, it doesn't have the polish to make it worth sticking with for its 11 hours. There are so many better games that mimic this gameplay loop and do so in a much more refined state.
Bossfights
The bossfights were a mixed bag of competent attacks and moments that were purely put there to worsen the time for the player. Across the game, there are 4 duels that you'll engage in, and each is just a pure bunch of meh. The Parasiter is just the stereotype where you attack an off-arena big thing's small things, and while the attack pattern wasn't too bad, despite its health making it a dreadful time drain, it was an ok fight. That is before it decided to also spawn extra, explosive enemies in its tiny arena, pushing the fight from tedious to even more tedious to prevent them from spawning. The Bruch, the third and final boss, faced similar flaws.
The final boss was probably the most infuriating to deal with. Why make a boss who doesn't adhere to the rules you've set for your melee combat, which is the crux of the game? The boss attacks faster than you can dodge in its first 2 phases; it has an odd hitbox registering when it goes off to self-heal, and in its final phase, it has an attack pattern that makes close-range fighting impossible, forcing you to slowly chip away at their health with the guns. If you can't tell, I despise that boss. Outside of the gameplay, their designs and soundtracks accompanying them are good, but compared to how refined and creative the rest of the game is in comparison with its visuals and audio, the bosses come across more as last-minute additions made out of scrapped concepts rather than integral points of the game.
Characters
The biggest issue not just with 'Evil West' but most Flying Wild Hog games is their writing and portrayal of characters. They, to put it nicely, suck. While most of the story is flat, the parts where it dips greatly are due to the characters, as they feel so unfinished in their developments and have eye-rolling dialogue that doesn't contribute much outside of the moment. Emilia Blackwell's whole narrative is that she's a polite woman in a male-dominated industry, but her shift into being foul-mouthed and standing up for herself is so sudden and poorly executed as there isn't enough time in the campaign for the writers to make it an impactful or interesting moment that has significance. Edgar Gravenor has jarring representations of himself in cutscenes as he sloppily juggles between the best friend or mentor-figure for Jesse (the protagonist), but never both at the same time despite the game's efforts otherwise - it's like they tried to make him the 'Witcher 3's Vesemir of this game but got a "nothing" character instead.
James Harrow is a "insert annoying higher executive asshole" stereotype, and Vergil Olney was infuriating with how exaggerated his nerd persona was. Even the protagonist sucked as they felt like a side character to the side characters, with no distinct personality to themselves, leeching off of the others' traits. The most he complimented the cast is when Vergil was spouting out some mostly simple scientific information, and Jesse hits the "In English" quip that hasn't been funny since 2000, even though Vergil is saying the most regular stuff ever.
The only redeeming factors of this lineup of characters were William Rentier and Chester Morgan as, for their short screen time, they seemed to have perfectly balanced personality traits with interesting backgrounds that make me wish they had more time on-screen. As for the antagonists, Peter D'Abano had a good enough introduction where I could see him as a "pure evil" antagonist that wages war against the humans and vampires simultaneously and to great enough effect, but his quick death and replacement by his daughter, Felicity, squandered that potential. Instead, Felicity felt so bare and empty, with all her actions feeling not thought out despite each scene hyping it up to be otherwise. Instead of carrying on her father's legacy, it's like she's making bratty decisions and not in a well-written manner either.
Atmosphere
Despite most of the game being a fluke, the atmosphere here was on point. Visually, the game was striking. That brutish tint on enemy designs, special effects, weapons and characters was quite phenomenal, as the whole vampire-hunter aesthetic mixed quite well with the wild-west vibe. While most of the characters' outfits weren't particularly memorable, the enemies here had great variation in their designs: spiders embroidered into the back of the Stalker, the corroded amalgamation of the Carrion Husk; despite the colour palette here not being greatly different, the shapes and sizes of these foes made up for it. Creative, effective and pleasing to the eye. Each level was quite dark and grim in its visuals, but the drastic vibrant blood splatter or the satisfying electrical discharges of the Zapper added a great colour variance to these scenes as if they even needed it. A burning oil farm, a mountaintop of lightning, a classical old-western desert; each area here was genuinely fantastic and probably the reason I kept going forward despite not enjoying other aspects of the game.
As for the audio, they were up to par. The sound effects were gruelling and added a certain level of satisfaction with the shocks, crunches and explosions that felt unrestricted. Each punch sounding mechanical was definitely the strongest area in this regard. The music was good enough to redeem some of the flaws I would encounter within the gameplay, but it didn't necessarily shine through elsewhere, lacking that memorability that makes other soundtracks perfect. The eerie looping of this mechanised Wild West anthems did help sell many parts to me, and there's enough diversity here within these tracks to keep you engaged, but unfortunately, since each level is just fighting areas strung up together, the only time you'll be able to listen to the music is during the downtime as you'll be stuck listening to the same semi-exhilarating combat theme for most of the game's duration. Technically, I found no technical bugs or glitches.
Story - 5.5/10
Gameplay - 5/10
Bossfights - 4.5/10
Characters - 2.5/10
Atmosphere - 7.5/10
SUBPAR
'Evil West' wastes its intriguing premise with weak characters, an unfulfilling story, and repetitive gameplay.
