avatarAlex Rowe

Summary

The author of the article expresses a mixed sentiment towards "Evil West," acknowledging its satisfying gameplay mechanics reminiscent of "God of War" but criticizing its overall package, including its generic story, unremarkable graphics, and lack of innovation beyond the core combat system.

Abstract

"Evil West," developed by Flying Wild Hog, is a game that promises an exciting blend of cowboy and steampunk themes with a focus on melee combat. While the game's combat mechanics are praised for their snappy and satisfying nature, drawing comparisons to "God of War," the author laments that the rest of the game fails to live up to the high standards set by its gameplay. The narrative is deemed generic, the graphics underwhelming, especially for a game spanning two hardware generations, and the sound design forgettable. Despite these shortcomings, the author acknowledges the game's potential, suggesting that with the right focus and technical improvements, Flying Wild Hog could create a AAA-tier title in the future. The game is considered overpriced at its full cost but is seen as a decent value for those who can access it through a game subscription service like PlayStation Plus.

Opinions

  • The author has a history of enjoying Flying Wild Hog's previous titles, particularly "Shadow Warrior 2," but feels that the studio's recent projects, including "Evil West," have not met the same standard.
  • "Evil West" is criticized for its uninspired protagonist and story, with the first notable female character introduced an hour into the game, contributing to a "bro" vibe that permeates the game.
  • The game's visual presentation is considered lackluster, with a lack of HDR support and performance issues even on the latest hardware, which is disappointing given the game's aesthetic potential.
  • The author appreciates the game's combat system and abilities progression but finds the enemy design repetitive and the overall challenge level to be on the easier side for seasoned players of similar action games.
  • Despite the game's flaws, the core gameplay loop is engaging enough for the author to consider completing it, albeit possibly while multitasking with a podcast.
  • The author believes that Flying Wild Hog has the capability to produce a high-quality AAA game if they can address their technical challenges with the Unreal Engine and find a more compelling narrative and artistic direction.

Evil West’s Awesome Gameplay Deserves a Better Game

What if God of War was about a punchy cowboy?

PS5 screenshot taken by the author.

I have a mixed history with Polish studio Flying Wild Hog’s action games. I loved their debut title Hard Reset, which was an excellent entry in the “run-backwards-and-shoot” genre popularized by stuff like Serious Sam and Painkiller. I thought that Shadow Warrior was both a fun follow-up and a clever reboot of a wildly offensive and stupid game from the nineties.

Shadow Warrior 2 is where they really hit their stride — and where they may have peaked. It added a much larger world, a huge collection of weapons, randomly generated elements for replayability, and full co-op support alongside some of the fastest and most enjoyable combat ever in a first person shooter. It was an excessive sequel in the best possible way, and the bespoke engine powering it helped it to look incredible in spite of a modest production budget.

In the years since those games, Flying Wild Hog has abandoned their internal technology in favor of the Unreal Engine. They had another crack at Shadow Warrior — and it’s one of the most disappointing games I’ve ever played. They tried out an indie sidescroller in the thoroughly okay Trek To Yomi. And they made Evil West — a weird cowboy game that’s mostly about hitting monsters with a magical glove.

After getting burned by Shadow Warrior 3, I wondered if the weird cowboy project had sapped all the budget and talent away that might have made that game better. I skipped Evil West when it first launched, and now I’ve been “rewarded” for my patience as it’s on a game subscription that I happen to pay for. All PlayStation Plus subscribers can now redeem a copy for PS4/PS5 as one of this month's featured titles. I paid for this sub on my own and wasn’t asked to write this article by the game’s publishers or by Sony.

This generic dude is your hero. He punches things. PS5 screenshot taken by the author.

I’m really glad that I didn’t have to pay full price for this. Evil West starts out with a somewhat nonsensical and strangely lavish pre-rendered cutscene, then drops you into the shoes of the most generic cowboy man so you can do that most generic of video game activities: side step carefully across a thin cliff ledge. Then you’ll be dumped into an arena to learn how to punch some vaguely zombie-like dudes.

That’s right, even though this is a game about cowboys living in an alternate steampunk-style universe, it’s mostly about melee combat. You do eventually get some guns to use, but they’re more like bonus attacks compared to the extreme damage done by your fists. It’s super obvious that the folks at Flying Wild Hog played a ton of God of War 2018 and said “hey we should do that, and maybe add co-op?”

And honestly, at least on the gameplay front, they did a pretty good job! The combat mechanics are snappy and satisfying, and the game doles out a sizeable collection of new abilities as the levels roll on. The enemy AI is smart enough to provide a fun challenge, but not so crazy that you’ll get stuck for more than a few tries on any one encounter. If you’ve played a lot of God of War or the Souls franchise, you might find things a little easy, but I found it breezy and enjoyable and full of crunchy feedback. The boss fights are particularly challenging, but their attacks are easy to dodge or even fully interrupt with a little patience and study.

If this fun action gameplay were wrapped in an excellent shell, then Evil West would be one of the best surprises. Unfortunately, I find most of the rest of its content miserable, or at best fine. The sound design is okay, with enough boom and unique sound cues to properly accentuate the combat, but the music might as well be literally anything for how in-the-background it is. The voice actors all sound like they were standing in different rooms holding different versions of the script.

Sometimes the lighting looks nice. PS5 screenshot taken by the author.

Graphically, it’s one of the most mundane-looking Unreal Engine 4 titles I’ve ever seen. I guess that makes some amount of sense as this launched across two different hardware generations and didn’t cost a ton of money, but it’s still disappointing. On PS5 you can choose between a 30FPS mode that’s higher res but stutters all the time, or a 60FPS mode that’s stuck at 1080p. The game also doesn’t support any sort of HDR output, which is a shame as I think the added color depth and brightness would work so well with the game’s visual style. Between the underwhelming performance here and the mess that was the “next gen” update of Shadow Warrior 3, I wish they had stuck to their own technology rather than switching over to Unreal.

At times the artwork looks beautiful, with interesting use of color and a neat vista here or there — but mostly you’ll be up close with weird vampire zombies that you’re just punching all the time. After a few stages, the enemy aesthetics start to blur together, and you’ll think of them in your head as “big guy, little guy, flying guy” instead of as the creatures that they represent.

The recent weird Gungrave reboot offered a much better visual package on the same engine and with similar production budget limitations. That game offered ray tracing effects on supported PC and console hardware, and a much more distinct look for its hallways full-o-dudes to fight.

Dudes. Do you like them? I hope you like them, because Evil West has so many dudes all over it and in it. It has a strange general “bro” vibe throughout, with the bulk of its cast made up of stern men who have things to say. The first woman (of two total prominent female characters) doesn’t appear until almost an hour in, and she’s a vampire child monster super weapon, which means that Flying Wild Hog has also seen the Underworld movies.

Oh look an evil little vampire monster girl — and oops, I’ve fallen asleep. PS5 screenshot taken by the author.

The general dude-li-ness is weird considering that the lead narrative designer/writer for the studio is a woman. None of the many men here are written all that convincingly either. Dialog is hammy and unnatural, focused more on “clever” lines than representing how people might speak to one another. The story’s scope is welded fast to the same tired “these grizzled bounty hunter men have to kill these evil vampires” tropes that you’ve seen many times before, only without much charisma. Shadow Warrior 3 was similarly plagued with lackluster writing and a story that was a disservice to the earlier games, but at least Evil West’s world design isn’t filled with lazy racial stereotypes stacked on top of each other in an attempt at representation.

If you’ve already played both recent God of War games, and Devil May Cry 5, and you just really need another game about a guy who punches other guys, I guess you could give this a download if you’re a PS Plus member? The core gameplay is so satisfying as to make the rest of the game’s flaws stick out that much more. I haven’t quite finished it as of this writing but I’m enjoying the act of playing it just enough that I might put a podcast on and mash my way through the rest of its stages.

There’s enough good in here that I’m convinced that Flying Wild Hog still has a AAA-tier game in them somewhere, but they just haven’t found their angle yet. If they can get the right franchise/characters and figure out their Unreal Engine technical issues, then they’d really have something. As it is, this is an awesome thirty dollar game sporting a sixty dollar price tag.

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