Evil West (PS4) - This is what Gungrave GORE should have been. An arcade third person shooter with an extra emphasis on melee done right. I've made it to stage 5 so far and stopping for now. The game controls well, but there is some minor jank here and there. All your weapons work on a cooldown, and those can be upgraded for the cooldown to go by faster. Jesse has an electrified gauntlet that he can use for melee attacks, juggles, and even parry with his shield. Parrying is pretty forgiving and is even easier than both Norse GoW games. You can even yank enemies towards you, or pull yourself towards them.
I don't mind the level design. Exploration is simplified, but when climbing from one new area, it doesn't take long, nor are bogged down by walkie-talkie sections. I appreciate straight forward level design of --> battle --> linear or off beaten path for collectible/money --> minor puzzle --> rinse and repeat. Some people complained about this, but I don't have a problem. This an arcade style game, so it's more to the point, and not so grand epic Action-RPG. I will say that I don't care much for some of the relaxed in-between sections where you are just running around collecting money or lore dumps. They don't last super long, but they could have just been cut-scenes or axed altogether.
Lots of people like to compare West's combat to GoW4 & Rag, but its influences are RE4, God Hand, Anarchy Reigns, Wild 9, and Bulletstorm. People need to start looking back more often and play older titles for reference points. What Evil West has over the newer God of War games are dodge cancelling animation (a tactic used by many in a lot in actions games like GH) and faster paced combat. The game has some cool environmental hazards you can knock enemies into or shoot at.
I am playing this on base PS4, and the game runs smooth at a stable 30 FPS. I know there is a higher frame rate on PS4 Pro and PS5, but that does not bother me. There was one weird audio glitch I had during the 3rd stage during one combat section, but went away quick.
BTW, if you want to know how to level select. You continue your game, pause menu, then select the lore tab. Going to the tab will bring up all of the levels you have beaten so far or completed all of them. Just select, and there you go. A weird way of doing level select I have no idea why FWH did it this way. That's it for now, and I will post more later.
