Developer: Flying Wild Hog
Publisher: Focus Entertainment
Release Date: 22nd November 2022
Platforms: Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, PS4, PS5
Reviewed on: PS4 Pro
Price: £49.99 consoles, £43.99 Windows
▫️ Code provided by the publisher ▫️
Evil West is the latest release from Focus Entertainment. It brings us a new action adventure from the Polish studio Flying Wild Hog who previously developed Shadow Warrior and its sequels – and more recently Trek to Yomi.
The player takes control of Jessie Rentier, a big tough cowboy vampire hunter (yip, you read that correctly) with a range of custom weaponry which enables him to mow down swathes of creatures of the night. The game is set in a fictionalised version of the American Wild West, blending in elements of horror and steampunk in an intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying manner.
The story revolves around an organisation called the Rentier Institute which leads the war against the vampires that America is plagued with for <reasons>. Jessie is the leading member of this institute and is joined by his father and a small supporting cast of other agents, engineers and doctors. It’s never really explained how America came to find itself in this predicament, we just have to run with this state of affairs. Plus, most people came here for some mindless vampire slaying, not a compelling narrative, right?
Well, for those who fall into that category there is a lot to enjoy about Evil West.
The core gameplay mechanics of Evil West are all about the combat. Jessie has a wide range of attacks and weapons at his disposal, covering both melee and ranged strikes. We start the game with a simple combination of punching and shooting but this is quickly and steadily added to by more exotic means of destruction.
The ranged attacks are not limited by ammo so there is no aspect of resource management in Evil West – instead they are all confined by cooldown periods which compel the player to use their different weapons sparingly and strategically. Jessie’s different assaults can be tied together into combos which can combine both his punch attack and a gun. It is incredibly satisfying to upper cut a vampire into the air then train your revolver on it for a follow up attack! There are also basic environmental attacks where you can e.g. punch an enemy into a pile of TNT or shoot said dynamite to unleash an explosion.
As you progress through Evil West your arsenal is expanded by the likes of a flamethrower, crossbow, shotgun and an electrocuting “zapper”.
So, yes, the combat is a lot of fun. Which is just as well as you’ll be doing a lot of it. A lot.
To me this is a double edged sword. The combat is well implemented, highly satisfying and the range of weapons and attacks available to the player is pleasingly varied. But, that’s pretty much it. Don’t be expecting God of War style environmental puzzles, fleshed out narrative or side quests because there aren’t any. Evil West clearly takes a lot of “inspiration” from Santa Monica Studio’s flagship title – even down to the way Jessie opens chests, the animation is eerily similar to Kratos doing likewise. It only really delivers on the combat though.
And that might be absolutely fine for you – if ten to fifteen hours of bashing the hell out of vampires and other assorted monsters sounds like your idea of fun then Evil West will certainly supply that in bucketloads.
For me though, it’s not enough. I really enjoyed God of War 2018 but not due to just the combat – the ancillary content and truly compelling story were what raised that game to greatness for me. As noted, Evil West does not have any of that so in my opinion is a decent, solid, but not great game.
Furthermore, although it is really well done, the combat for me got repetitive quite quickly. There are extremely perfunctory sequences between fights (I hesitate to call them puzzles) but these are generally no more complicated than shooting something or pushing a train car down its rails a bit.
There are “light RPG elements” in the game – you can upgrade both Jessie’s skills and his equipment. I didn’t find this particularly enticing though and just worked my way through the trees without much thought about how it would translate through to the actual gameplay.
I also found the pacing of the game in places slightly strange – on more than one occasion I defeated a boss (possibly technically a sub boss) then was thrown straight into another such (sub) boss fight with no exploration or story exposition at all between encounters. Moreover, you just know as soon as you enter a large open space what is about to happen, there’s very little suspense and few surprises in this game…
I had questions about other aspects of the game design. In more than one place where I had a choice of paths and realised I had gone the main route and obviously some pick ups would be down the other, the game didn’t let me backtrack. Eg, I squeezed through a gap in the landscape but then couldn’t go back through the gap. I can’t see any good reason for this and it was frustrating as it made some collectibles missable.
Probably my biggest issue with the game though was what passed for a story. It’s nonsense. We are thrust into the narrative straight away without much explanation – this can be fine if the story is strong and unfolds in a satisfactory manner which I really can’t say for Evil West. The plot as far as it goes is highly contrived. “Oh, the gauntlet doesn’t work, that’s fine we can go and get those special coils from that place to fix it”. That place which just so happens to be teeming with vampire scum. OK…
The exposition felt like a really bad action B movie – token bits of dialogue inserted in between large chunks of violence.
I don’t want to be overly critical though – like I said the combat is loads of fun – the combination of ranged and melee attacks means your attacks can be quite varied and the progressive addition of more equipment like the shotgun, the zapper and a flame thrower makes pounding vampire scum a blast.
The game’s visuals are generally really good. Jessie himself looks a total bad ass and the monsters are suitably disgusting looking, It’s built in Unreal Engine 4 so we’re not talking cutting edge graphics but it mostly looks pretty impressive.
Evil West gets around the whole vampires not being able to be in sunlight thing by placing some scenes at dusk or in shade. This results in some nice lighting effects as the low sun casts its light over Jessie and his surroundings. At times the visual design reminds me of Vampyr when we are knee deep in blood and some of the monsters likewise have a similar vibe to them. I loved Vampyr but one of my bugbears with the game was its permanent night time setting. Evil West tackles this challenge in a satisfying and visually impressive manner.
Speaking of visuals, one thing I should probably mention is the performance. The official details from Focus Entertainment for consoles are:
- XboxOne/OneS: 1080p @ 30fps
- XboxOneX: 2160p @ 30fps
- PS4: 1080p @ 30fps
- PS4 Pro: 1080p @ 30fps (with improved graphical quality compared to PS4)
- XSS: 1080p @ 30fps
- XSX: 2160p @ 30fps (quality) / 1080p @ 60fps (performance)
- PS5: 2160p @ 30fps (quality) / 1080p @ 60fps (performance)
This review was done on PS4 Pro so 1080p at 30fps. As detailed above I thought the visual design was fairly impressive overall with some good use of lighting effects in particular.
I thought the frame rate was actually OK – 60fps is of course preferable and is available to PS5 / Series X owners but I only really noticed it when I went straight into a different game running at 60fps after my sessions with Evil West. In 2022, dropping the resolution to 1080p on the newest consoles to achieve the best frame rate will not be very satisfactory to many gamers though.
In another downside, there was some noticeable pop in at some parts of the game. Hopefully this, along with some of the bugs that are still present in the reviewed version, will be addressed in future patches.
My initial thoughts after maybe an hour or so of Evil West were “it’s like a poor man’s God of War”. Nothing I played since then has made me reassess this. However, it falls well short of GoW in pretty much every respect. Visually it is good but nothing like as impressive. Likewise the character models, level design, gameplay all fall short with the possible exception of the combat itself.
If you enjoy combat for its own sake and are not too bothered about anything else you will have a lot of fun with this game. Personally I want a bit more – a strong compelling story or some complementary gameplay to go with all the fighting. Evil West doesn’t really do this. Tam on the Pure Dead Gaming Discord described it as a perfect candidate for a PS+ Extra or Game Pass game and it’s difficult to argue with that assessment.
-Calum