I’ve been enthusiastic about developer Flying Wild Hog’s Evil West since its reveal at The Recreation Awards in 2020. A lot about it instantly captured my consideration. Regardless of Pink Lifeless Redemption’s greatest efforts, I’ve at all times 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 harking back to one thing you’d see within the PlayStation 2 period: cowboys who defend mere mortals from the key horrors of the world, equivalent to vampires and different creatures. My thoughts can’t assist however see Darkwatch, a sport I performed repeatedly as a toddler, after I see Evil West.
Much more typically, that period was nice for third-person motion westerns – Gun, Pink Lifeless Revolver, the aforementioned Darkwatch, and Name of Juarez (though Techland launched this in the course of the subsequent technology, its 2006 launch 12 months is shut sufficient to the PS2 that it feels at dwelling here). All of that is to say that taking part in Evil West makes me really feel like a toddler once more in one of the simplest ways.
Past its setting, which had me waxing nostalgic even earlier than its launch, nearly each facet of Evil West presents itself how I bear in mind PS2 video games doing after 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 in opposition to 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 sport has, too.
In Evil West the Sanguines, an underground council of vampires, are seemingly being break up aside by a younger, anger-filled daughter who, like her father, believes it’s time for her type to cease hiding within the shadows, and it’s as much as Jesse to cease her. The story is okay thus far. 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. Typically a easy purpose to kill numerous vampires and enemy creatures is all I would like. I definitely don’t want each sport to characteristic 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 nicely, though I’d be remiss to not point out that this is without doubt one of the first video games I’ve performed that wears its God of Struggle (2018) inspiration totally on its sleeve. Fight performs out practically 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 one among God of Struggle’s 9 realms. You employ a rope mechanic to achieve new locations, destroy chests by punching by their high, and encounter fight area after fight area in between more explorative sections.
In these fight arenas is the place the sport jogs my memory most of my PS2 days. Bear in mind how, possible resulting from {hardware} limitations, ranges had 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 more. And the visible fashion wraps all of this up with a pleasant bow on high.
I suppose evaluating Evil West to the PS2 video games of my childhood may very well 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 sport I'll largely neglect about shortly after I roll by its credit. However maybe once in a while, 5, 10, 15 years from now, I’ll give it some thought and the enjoyable I had for a brief few days. Not each sport 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 on daily basis a sport makes me really feel like a child once more, in any case.
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