Hunt vampires, with style | Evil West - Short Review

Welcome to Evil West. A third person twisted mashup of all the gritty genres that we all hate to love. Steampunk, Western, Supernatural Horror, Gothic, Souls-like, Shooter; you name it, Evil West has got it.

Evil West is set in an alternate version of Old Wild West America, with vampires and monsters battling against steampunk tech powered cowboys for supremacy. You control Jesse Rentier, a relatively established Vampire Slayer and heir apparent to the Rentier Institute, a monster hunting organization founded by his forefathers and now led by his father, in their quest to eradicate the land of monsters.

The linear campaign, which can be played either Solo or Coop, starts off right away with a typical wild west scenario of stopping a train with dynamites. It gave me flashbacks of my time with Red Dead Redemption 2, with very similar vibes going along. It doesn’t waste its time by immediately establishing itself as the high octane game it described itself to be by introducing the combat mechanics. As you go along the game, you are introduced to the various moves, weapons, and equipment available at your arsenal. As well as the different combat approaches you can take and play with.

So far every weapon and equipment in the game has its own skill tree for additional customization. Weapon types ranging from close range shotguns, high powered revolvers, to long range rifles. In addition, you also have the state of the art signature melee weapon: The Rentier Gauntlet. Which is basically a Wolverine Gauntlet powered by Electricity / Lightning.

Evil West doesn’t take itself too seriously and doubles down on its absurd setting and genre to the gameplay’s benefit. You can dodge, block, parry attacks as well as mix and match melee and ranged combat on the fly along with your other gadgets such as bombs and shields. Enemies stay in the air when fired or damaged upon so you can continue your momentous combo and do additional damage. Explosions of blood splatter around everywhere even for the smallest hits that you do, making everything more visceral and gory.

You have total control over your guns as your pistols are fired via hip-fire while your rifle can be fired while aiming. This system makes for quick combos between the two (in addition to the inherent melee combat) without the need to manually switch weapons. Tools are also activated rather quickly and don't care much about long wind up times or annoying channeling animations to succeed.

The monster enemies on the other hand are challenging, feral, and mostly swarm-like in its behavior.

Numerous enemy types are present in Evil West; from the mindless zombie-like Boo-Hags, to the Werewolf-like Nagals, up to the higher level bosses that you can fight . All have their own strengths, weakness and they perfectly compliment the combat system provided to us. You also encounter human enemies occasionally and combat can revert to a more of a traditional third person shooter type.

Evil West is truly action packed and is one of the best examples of power fantasies I’ve seen in a while. The gameplay feels gratifying and empowering, from the combat system, the item customization and progression, up to the straightforward no non-sense linear campaign design.