New Vampire Horror Evil West: A Modern PS2 Action Game, In All The Best Ways

It’s a 16-mission linear action game with some simple skill trees to make your character better and that’s it. Most players will beat it in about 11-13 hours. This might seem like a weird thing to praise, but in effect stripping out all the superficial elements you come to expect out of modern games means that Evil West hones in on what it does best, rather than expand beyond its strengths.

Sure, if you look closely, you’ll notice the seams and corners that were cut in Evil West, likely due to its smaller budget compared to other single-player action games like God of War. Characters outside of cutscenes don’t move their lips when they talk, audio quality can sometimes dip, and levels only look nice if you don’t poke around windows to see beyond the linear area of the mission. But where it matters, Evil West works great. Playing on PS5, I ran the game in its performance mode and found a rock-solid 60fps experience, with only a few dips during one particular moment in one late-game mission. Camera and movement controls are responsive and work fine at all times. This might be a budget game, but Flying Wild Hog spent the money in the right places.

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.