I’ve been enthusiastic about developer Flying Wild Hog’s Evil West since its reveal at The Sport Awards in 2020. A lot about it instantly captured my consideration. Regardless of Pink Useless 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 paying homage 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, once I see Evil West.
Much more typically, that period was nice for third-person motion westerns – Gun, Pink Useless Revolver, the aforementioned Darkwatch, and Name of Juarez (though Techland launched this throughout the subsequent era, its 2006 launch 12 months is shut sufficient to the PS2 that it feels at dwelling right here). All of that is to say that enjoying Evil West makes me really feel like a toddler once more in the easiest way.
Past its setting, which had me waxing nostalgic even earlier than its launch, virtually each side of Evil West presents itself how I keep 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 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 form to cease hiding within the shadows, and it’s as much as Jesse to cease her. The story is ok to this point. I’d be content material if that’s all of the story the sport gave me. It will get the job carried out, and it, maybe unintentionally so, harkens again to the Darkwatches of the world. Typically a easy cause to kill numerous vampires and enemy creatures is all I want. I actually 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 likely one of the first video games I’ve performed that wears its God of Conflict (2018) inspiration absolutely on its sleeve. Fight performs out practically the identical from the close-up, over-the-shoulder, third-person digital camera preserving 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 looks like a stroll by means of one in every of God of Conflict’s 9 realms. You employ a rope mechanic to achieve new locations, destroy chests by punching by means of their prime, and bump into 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. Keep in mind how, possible because of {hardware} limitations, ranges had been a linear mixture of “discover to discover a chest or two when you get some further story” and “time to struggle waves of enemies till an indeterminable, seemingly random period of time has handed?” 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 needs you to focus solely on fight when it’s time to kill and when it’s not, it needs 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 type wraps all of this up with a pleasant bow on prime.
I suppose evaluating Evil West to the PS2 video games of my childhood could possibly be perceived negatively, however I’m totally having fun with my time with it to date. 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 principally neglect about shortly after I roll by means of its credit. However maybe now and again, 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 typically 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 spite of everything.
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