My latest Game Pass obsession is a vampire-punching action game that could be Red Dead Redemption 2's wacky alternate timeline
Apr. 9, 2024Now Playing | Jesse Rentier is no Arthur Morgan, but he’s living a different kind of Hell
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There are few moments in Evil West as satisfying as the meaty wet thud of uppercutting a vampire for the first time. Don’t get me wrong, I love a well-placed headshot as much as the next third-person shooter fan, but there’s something so deliciously, comically visceral about introducing Jesse’s gauntlet to the jaw of a Sanguisuge Vessel and watching it stagger back in confusion.
Vampire bat country
Evil West shows that there’s more to the American frontier than Red Dead Redemption 2
One thing I noticed – and loved – immediately about Evil West is its simplicity. In a game landscape filled with sprawling 100-hour RPGs, each brimming with dense main and side quest material, collectibles, craftables, complex combat systems, and more, this no-fuss single-player action game feels like taking a full-bodied sigh.
Evil West is a love-letter to mid-2000s action games in the best of ways. It cuts through the noise to deliver punchy yet intuitive combat that doesn’t take hours to master, a dynamic setting with an immediately likeable protagonist, and from what I’ve played so far, the start of a focused, linear storyline to keep you barreling ahead. I was sold almost instantly. But as I race through this veritable feast of vampires, gore, bandits, and more, my mind keeps circling back to a very different video-gamified take on the perilous Wild West.
Red Dead Redemption 2 is the kind of game I love to death and probably won’t replay anytime soon because of it. Rockstar’s wide open plains of the American heartlands paint a beautiful, troubling backdrop, and as gruff outlaw Arthur Morgan stares down the barrel of a life of sin, the catharsis of it all is a unique kind of gut wrenching. Meanwhile, Jesse Rentier is an entirely different hero; he’s here to have a good time, and he doesn’t feel bad about it.
When it comes to riotous, nostalgic joy, Evil West more than packs a punch.
I don’t feel bad about it either. I’m not comparing Evil West and RDR2 as games, but as totally discrete Wild West adventures that represent two contrasting takes on an action-packed epic.
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