A wild west vampire hunt with gun fights, brawling, and lots and lots of blood.

Evil West is an action adventure RPG that takes place in an alternate 1800s wild west frontier. You play as Jessie Rentier, an agent of the Rentier institute, an organization dedicated to defending the United States from the threat of vampires. You use a huge array of your father’s inventions to battle the bloodthirsty predators intent on taking over the country. Evil West is developed by Flying Wild Hog and published by Focus Entertainment. And thanks to Focus for shooting me a copy of the game.

Evil West’s story takes you on a dark, wild west ride with a bit of a steampunk vibe. The Rentier institute has a lot of cool toys, but there’s also the necessary western fare of pistols, rifles, and shotguns. Later on you can unlock a nice twist for them too. The gameplay is pretty fast paced. I would compare it to DOOM (2016), and some of the boss fights get pretty frantic and chaotic.

I have a total of 20 hours in Evil West. That’s finishing the campaign on singleplayer and a few levels co-op. Being a fan of darker settings, I really appreciated the vampires in the old west atmosphere. The story follows a lot of western staples, like hardships on the frontier of a burgeoning new country and the importance of family. There was also a new element that I appreciated for many reasons. The US government is not wholly portrayed as a ‘good guy’. At one point Jessie mocks ‘wasting taxpayer dollars’ (though on a particularly awesome piece of equipment). The Rentier institute’s government attache is also an over the top, stereotypical government bureaucrat. This attitude towards government was also probably quite historically accurate, and certainly out of place in modern game storytelling. Speaking of historically accurate, Jessie is portrayed as quite knowledgeable and respectful of the church and God when he has (what I’d also consider a western staple) a pep talk with a priest. Another Christian friendly/neutral game. I did feel the ending cinematic was just average. Not bad, it was just vanilla without the Oreo cookie bits.

A small critique of the boss fights or mini-boss fights, they can be a little bit repetitive. As you progress through the game, you are introduced to new boss types. At a certain point, you stop getting new boss types and fight against different combinations of boss types. These aren’t always fun per-se, but they do at least offer a unique challenge mastering multiple different boss fight mechanics within a single fight.

The co-op experience was fun, but a little underwhelming. I was hoping player 2 would get to choose Edgar, as he was the most fleshed out and interesting of the other cast. You both play as Jessie, but right off the bat there are very few cosmetic options to differentiate you. Unlocking different cosmetic sets comes purely from playing the game. You can play the entire Evil West campaign through co-op, which is a huge plus and a big draw for me to the game in the first place.

I would love to see DLC for more story campaigns for Evil West. A prequal story for Edgar would be awesome given his pivotal role and involvement in the Rentier Institute. The current campaign leaves off at the perfect point for endless follow up adventures, similar to serial westerns back in the day, so any ‘future adventures’ of Jessie Rentier are wide open with possibilites. Some kind of co-op horde mode ala Vermintide would be great, as all the different vampires and monsters absolutely beg for this sort of option.

I can’t really recommend buying Evil West at it’s $49.99 USD price tag. I might could play the game more, finishing the co-op campaign I started. I’m just more of a one-and-done kind of player. There’s not a lot of replayability for me in the campaign, and there are currently no other game modes. There is a New Game+ mode, but I don’t partake in that kinda thing. Everyone’s got a different budget, so I hate saying ‘get it at X price’. I will emphasize the game is good, I just think it’s overpriced at full price. Whatever you think 15-20 hours on a single playthrough is worth is what I would recommend.

My biggest selling point for Evil West is the story. I love dark settings, and this game definitely has that in spades. It has the serious moments as you would expect from a horror game, with the intensity dialed back to an action game. The missions were quite reasonable in length, generally 30-45 minutes. There are some great cinematics before and after each one too, so you get a lot of satisfying character and story development. I’d love to see Flying Wild Hog go further with this game as a franchise, maybe an open world RPG. I’d buy that at full AAA game price.