Vampires in the Wild West aren’t all that awesome
Wild west cut with some futuristic elements or demons is a pretty popular combination among developers. There are quite a few games in this vein on the market. Evil West also follows this path and primarily targets vampires, on whom it uses both classic and modern weapons. Quite a promising configuration that will find its supporters, even if it does not overcome all pitfalls with clarity.
A secret American institute is preparing a superweapon against the vampire menace, but you know what, the toothy monsters are one step ahead and will make a real mess before people expect. The fate of the country, humanity and even his father, who heads the association, is in the hands of the hunter Jesse. Practically alone (or in cooperation with your friend if he owns the game) he must slaughter hordes of vampires, werewolves and other monsters on a painful journey through several environments. Whether it’s a desert with rocky cliffs, western towns, a factory with oil wells, caves, snowy mountains, swamps, a train station or even a corn field.
The expedition will last approximately 15-20 hours depending on your abilities and difficulty. The easiest one is marked as a story and you should be fine with it, but that may be true in the first hours, but in the advanced phase, you will often have a big problem surviving there. Normal difficulty is initially just right, only fanatics who love Souls games should go higher, even if Evil West does not walk this line. And after the final, there is also the possibility to play New Game Plus with more demanding challenges, but with the same equipment.
Although several related characters assist you as you progress through the game, they are only a support team, none of which help you directly in battle. Even the tough Edgar disappears whenever the action is about to happen, although in the beginning he at least pretends to have your back for a while. But not really, forget it, if you don’t play co-op it’s on you. Anyway, thanks to these characters, you at least get new information and technological innovations, which are a joy to kill with. We’re going to pretend, that’s right, and pacifists and sensitive people should find another game. Evil West is quite rough, sometimes also in the dialogues, which are nicely translated into Czech, even with profanity, so nothing for children.
The beginning does not look in vain at all, the story starts quite well, the tough protagonist is quite nice, and the atmosphere is thick. It doesn’t matter that it reminds us of many cult films and games that we have already dealt with. The gameplay is probably the closest to Darksiders. Jesse looks like Indiana Jones at certain moments, especially when he catches an otherwise practically unused whip and swings over some chasm. In appearance, he reminds Van Helsing – of the modern movie. Some passages are like from The Witcher, but maybe on a side note, while wandering through the wild and in this case also the strange west, you will also think of Red Dead Redemption 2. Alternatively, you will discover other well-known motifs here, some of which the authors do not even hide. For example, the Belmontville temple is an allusion to the legendary family of Castlevania.
The game manages to attract attention in the initial phase and manages to maintain this status in the first hours. However, the longer you play, the more the stereotype resulting from the used passing scheme becomes apparent, which greatly limits the player. Corridor levels will not allow you to deviate from the designated path and at most offer small detours and a few hidden corners. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if enemies appeared naturally around, which is the case in the beginning, but later only rarely.
Dynamic but chaotic battles are usually waiting for you, where opponents come at you from all sides and sometimes from the air. At the same time, you must, first of all, take down the bosses, also prevent them from recuperating, and at the same time you need to be constantly on the move, otherwise, it will be right after you. Running or somersaulting with occasional lunges or shooting is a good tactic and will also give time to regenerate your healing ability. However, the edges of the arenas usually trap you and the enemies will take advantage of that.
It’s still delicious, and adrenaline-filled, but another problem is the small assortment of opponents, which is repeated very often in battles. Their combinations change, but it’s still such a well-rounded lineup.
You often get a sense of déjà vu because many of the fights look almost the same. You know you’ve already killed that big flying bastard and his entourage thirty times before, except it was a different environment. Well, it’s already a nuisance. And the progress is already pushing you from one such arena to another, barely taking a few steps.
Evil West runs on the Unreal engine. Graphically, it is decent and at the same time not demanding on hardware. On an average build, you can put it on epic settings and you can further beautify it by setting unlimited fps, VSync, anti-aliasing, motion blur, Nvidia DLSS and AMD CAS. In addition, there are settings for the gameplay itself, including aiming assistance and arachnophobia. So if you hate spiders, the game will simply remove them from the passages where they appear. While playing, you can see illuminated interactive objects and transitions nicely, so you can find your way around quickly. Cutscenes can seem weaker than looking at the gameplay itself, although they nicely complete the story and it’s nice that they can not only be skipped, but also paused if, for example, something disturbs you and you want to watch them in peace.
Among the errors, I also count imprecise aiming, which at first did not manifest itself at all, but later, apparently after improvement, the rifle and crossbow had a shifted front sight, even during automatic alignment. Hitting a smaller or more distant target was thus a problem. Evil West looks almost spectacular at launch and scores points in the first few hours. In the others, however, it already loses points and it may happen that you will be excited at first, but you will finish it only out of obligation and because of the finale of the story, which is finally decent and without major surprises.
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