Evil West

Evil West is far from the most complex or innovative action game around, but it nails the most important parts of its old-school, monster-killing campaign.

Evil West's kinetic combat thrills as you dismember vampires by the bucket load, but it's dragged down by level design that's both formulaic and repetitive.

A gleeful splat-'em-up featuring a lovely bag of tricks.

Evil West delivers on its big dumb action game premise, for better and worse.

Still, disregarding the downtime spent on its charmless characters and bland plot, there’s an undeniable thrill to the fighting. If only the rest of the game packed as memorable a punch as its protagonist does when beating the insides out of Evil West’s vampires, it would be easier to recommend. As it stands, it’s not much more than a series of better-than-average monster-pummeling arenas interrupted by uninspired storytelling.

An entertaining remix of familiar action mechanics and narrative tropes, Evil West is a solid modern beat-em-up that puts combat first.

However you feel about Evil West, the $50/$60 asking price is too steep for what’s on offer: the nature of its level design, limited enemy variety, and forgettable story will get in the way of your enjoyment, even if you’re only there for the combat. As engaging as it is, that action just doesn’t make up for Evil West’s shortcomings elsewhere.

For me, Evil West is the kind of game I miss these days. I’ll fully admit, I love games like Destiny and Fortnite, games that never end and are filled with battle passes, crafting, loot, etc. Those games can provide hours of fun and are great to play while chilling with friends or listening to a podcast. But I don’t want everything to be a complex, all-encompassing, time-monopolizing social experience that continues to grow and evolve as time goes on. And Evil West is a wonderful example of the kind of games I want more of moving forward. Not everything needs an endgame or a crafting table. Sometimes, I just want to move forward, hear some bad banter and punch some monsters in the face for a few hours. And Evil West gave me exactly that. No more. No less.

Evil West is one of those really enjoyable 7/10s. It's never going to win any awards and it's probably not going to stick long in the memory, but give it a few years and someone, somewhere, will swear to you that it's actually an underappreciated classic. It's a chunky action game that knows how to have fun, both in and out of combat.

Evil West is a straight shooter. It doesn’t pretend to be something more than it is — a game about cowboys slaying vampires without mercy. Despite being a tad unvaried, the combat is viscerally gratifying and confidently uncomplicated. And for that alone, the game is largely able to overcome the hiccups with the limited multiplayer, graphics crashes, and awkwardly edited story. Though the campaign is fairly short given the asking price, it has a permadeath mode and new game plus for replayability. Evil West may be rough around the corners, but it’s worth a shot of whiskey down at the nearest saloon.