I’ve been enthusiastic about developer Flying Wild Hog’s Evil West since its reveal at The Game Awards in 2020. So a lot about it instantly captured my consideration. Despite Red Dead Redemption’s finest efforts, I’ve all the time felt there’s a scarcity of untamed wests in video video games, though some video games use a western’s system to inform a narrative set elsewhere. Evil West’s premise additionally feels paying homage to one thing you’d see within the PlayStation 2 period: cowboys who shield mere mortals from the key horrors of the world, equivalent to vampires and different creatures. My thoughts can’t assist however see Darkwatch, a recreation I performed repeatedly as a baby, once I see Evil West.
Even extra typically, that period was nice for third-person motion westerns – Gun, Red Dead Revolver, the aforementioned Darkwatch, and Call of Juarez (though Techland launched this throughout the subsequent era, its 2006 launch yr is shut sufficient to the PS2 that it feels at house right here). All of that is to say that taking part in Evil West makes me really feel like a baby once more in one of the simplest ways.
Beyond its setting, which had me waxing nostalgic even earlier than its launch, virtually each facet of Evil West presents itself how I bear in mind PS2 video games doing once I was ten or so years previous within the early 2000s. It begins with a cinematic that units up Jesse Rentier, the son of the chief of the Rentier Institute, an arm of the federal government that works particularly towards the forces of evil hidden in plain sight. Jesse is a gunslinger with an electricity-imbued weapon on one arm, wolverine claws on the opposite, and three weapons in tow, like his father earlier than and his grandfather, too. He has a working accomplice – what good cowboy goes it alone within the wild west? – and over-the-top garb that matches his caricature-like physique, and naturally, the persona each main cowboy in principally any western recreation has, too.
In Evil West the Sanguines, an underground council of vampires, are seemingly being cut up aside by a younger, anger-filled daughter who, like her father, believes it’s time for her sort to cease hiding within the shadows, and it’s as much as Jesse to cease her. The story is okay to date. I’d be content material if that’s all of the story the sport gave me. It will get the job finished, and it, maybe by chance so, harkens again to the Darkwatches of the world. Sometimes a easy cause to kill numerous vampires and enemy creatures is all I want. I definitely don’t want each recreation to function a narrative that raises the hairs on my arms or strikes me to tears. And in Evil West’s case, I’m okay to comply with Jesse to the farthest reaches of this unusual frontier to cease evil.
The gameplay speaks on to my PS2 nostalgia, as effectively, though I’d be remiss to not point out that this is likely one of the first video games I’ve performed that wears its God of War (2018) inspiration totally on its sleeve. Combat performs out almost the identical from the close-up, over-the-shoulder, third-person digicam conserving the motion in your face, to the finishers that unlock when the enemy is glowing orange, to the over-the-top guts and gore that splatter with every enemy kill. Even traversing this wild west seems like a stroll by way of one among God of War’s 9 realms. You use a rope mechanic to achieve new locations, destroy chests by punching by way of their high, and come across fight enviornment after fight enviornment in between extra explorative sections.
In these fight arenas is the place the sport jogs my memory most of my PS2 days. Remember how, seemingly attributable to {hardware} limitations, ranges have been a linear mixture of “explore to find a chest or two while you get some additional story” and “time to fight waves of enemies until an indeterminable, seemingly random amount of time has passed?” I do, and whereas writing it out doesn’t sound so flattering, it’s considerably refreshing – though that would simply be my nostalgia speaking. Evil West desires you to focus completely on fight when it’s time to kill and when it’s not, it desires you to go discover that random chest with gold in it.
Even the presentation of Evil West feels nostalgic, from its 2000s-esque fonts to the way it showcases collectible lore bits and extra. And the visible model wraps all of this up with a pleasant bow on high.
I suppose evaluating Evil West to the PS2 video games of my childhood might be perceived negatively, however I’m completely having fun with my time with it up to now. It is aware of what it’s and is reveling in that by placing its bombastic fight up entrance, its story behind that, and its lovingly tropey characters someplace within the center. Evil West is, like numerous PS2-era video games I nonetheless look again on fondly, a recreation I’ll principally neglect about shortly after I roll by way of its credit. But maybe every so often, 5, 10, 15 years from now, I’ll give it some thought and the enjoyable I had for a brief few days. Not each recreation wants to stay with me lengthy after I end it, and generally it’s okay for video games to really feel like these of yesteryear. It’s not each day a recreation makes me really feel like a child once more, in any case.
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