izigame.me

There once was a man, an average Joe like you and I, and this man had a dream. It wasn't the most ingenious of dreams, but it was an interesting one. "What if Supernatural were a movie?" he wondered. "And what if it were directed by Michael Bay?"
Well, Flying Wild Hogs apparently heard the man. Lo and behold, Evil West.

What I Liked

- Evil West never takes itself seriously. It knows what it is, a feel-good game, and runs away with it. It never sets up a complex plot, never sets ups moral grays or nuance. It fully intends to be a game you just get into and have fun with, and it does that quite well. Genre accurate asshole politician? Check. Genre accurate supportive, older brother guy? Check. Genre accurate over-expecting father that cares more about killing monsters than his kid? Check. Genre accurate dead mother? Double check. Some might find the lack of such complexity a downside. I feel that if you decrease the complexity somewhere, you can use it to highlight other parts of your medium. While I agree that Evil West doesn't do that exceptionally, it does it well enough. Complex games have their place, and so do simpler ones like this. Especially when they are fun.
- The game trades complexity for reliability. There isn't a combo list that you have to memorize, there are just a few moves and they all come together tightly. It makes it easy to learn the game and easier to express what you want your guy to do on screen.
- The game is linear, in a stage based setting.
- The game has a parry. I am a proponent of having parries in my action game, and any game that does it well gets my approval, simple as. The parry in this game is a deeply ingrained feature. You can do without it for sure, but the game never gives you a reason not to. Keeping in line with the design, its not a super hard to do thing and pretty reliable in most situations. It plays very well with other mechanics, and as such the game always encourages you to use it. There are things you cannot parry, and the value of repositioning that dodges/rolls provide is not lost.
- The game is short. Simple games, in most circumstances, benefit from being short. Ending before the simplicity transforms into drudgery is a wise decision, and I appreciate that the developers went down this route.

What I Was Neutral About

- The different weapons in this game are reliable over being complex, but some are just too reliable. Many cool weapons that you get later down the line become stuff you just use when the other stuff is on cool-down, or to execute a rush down of a critical target at higher difficulties. I found myself never using different variants or more niche weapons more than once or twice a stage. Maybe its a me-thing, but I was never nudged by the game into using them even at the highest difficulty.
- The difficulty scaling just makes things a test of attrition and makes some challenging enemies downright annoying. There is a flying enemy that buffs enemies, has invulnerability unless you do specific things, and becomes highly evasive and possesses ranged attacks once you start getting close to damaging it. I believe this enemy isn't that annoying at lower difficulties, but I have developed a residual hatred for it after completing the game.

What I Disliked

- There are some visual bugs. Sometimes the camera just becomes so free that it gets stuck on other sides of a wall and that can be frustrating when you are in a mini-boss battle.
- Despite finishing the game at Evil difficulty, I did not get an achievement for it >:(

Arbitrary Rating for Nerds

Mechanics: 7/10
Gameplay: 7/10
Art: 7/10
Music: 6/10
Story: 6.5/10
Technical: 7/10
Overall: 7/10
Ideal Price: $15 or lower