For a long time I’ve been looking for a new game like Left 4 Dead. It doesn’t have to be a horde shooter. Something with a horror aesthetic, hopefully creepy with online co-op, a good variety of enemies, short but impactful levels with moments of chaos and a good soundtrack.
There has been a list of games that I thought might be that. Redfall, World War Z, Back 4 Blood. None of them quite hit the spot. The trailer for this caught my eye and I thought this might be it. Spoiler: once again I was wrong. However that doesn’t mean there’s nothing to enjoy here. Is there enough to give it a great score? Well keep reading to find out.
Clik here to view.
What’s going on
During the tutorial you’ll be awoken from a deep sleep in the year of 2099 and informed that your services are needed to fight the cult. What cult might you ask? Well that’s not really answered near as I can tell. There’s a main bad guy named Sarcul so I just assume it’s his. Oh also you fight for something called The Order Of the Dragon. It’s not really explained what that is either.
After said tutorial you’ll be given a choice between 3 Daywalkers. Leon, Victoria and Mashaka(Mashaka you’ll already know as he’s the one you played through the tutorial with) You’ll pretty much always have a lady named Persephida in your ear. It’s never really explained who she is or why she’s the one barking orders at you, but she’s there. Think of her as this games Navi, but far less annoying.
Of the 3 Vampires EvilVEvil offers I settled in to playing as Victoria but I did try out the other two. Each on has it’s own set of guns, ability(yes, not plural)and upgrades. Different options for guns and upgrades will come up as you get further in the game.
EvilVEvil has a total of 11 missions which will take about 20 minutes each to finish. If you play them in order the variety and their difficulty will scale up. You’ll go from pretty basic nicely dressed cult members shooting at you to beings with giant blades for arms and hooded figures who shoot magic at you.
It’s important to note that all of EvilVEvil’s 11 missions have a season one label. This leads me to believe the game has more content on the way.
Pros
Honestly there is a lot to like about EvilVEvil. The biggest stand out for me was the art style. I’ve seen some complain that the enemy’s look flat. I disagree. To me it looks like a horror comic in motion and I enjoyed it. It actually made me feel like I was playing a comic book. Weird I know.
I also enjoyed the Gameplay as a whole. Gun play was fun and smooth, the gun sounds were impactful, and the upgrade system seems very fair. Every mission can all be beaten in around 20-25 minutes. For a game like this, that’s perfect, in my opinion.
I’m sure you noticed there wasn’t a lot in the way of a story described here which for EvilVEvil is fine. A multiplayer game should focus more on Gameplay then story. It’s there if you want it but most people are just going to skip them anyway and get straight to the action.
Cons
Depending on how you were made aware of EvilVEvil you’ll notice up until now I haven’t mentioned the on line co-op much. Yes, it has 3 player co-op, and I’ve heard it’s good. The problem is that at the time of writing, there’s a total of 6 people in the game with a player peak of 37. While I was playing on a Sunday there was 4. For a 3 player Co-op game that’s bad. This is extremely disappointing as I was hoping I could talk some friend’s into this game and I’m not sure I’ll be able to do even at $19.99 if no one is playing.
Clik here to view.
Now I mentioned earlier that EvilVEvil’s levels have a season 1 label. Assuming they intend on a season 2 (oddly the steam page doesn’t mention anything) this chart doesn’t give be high hopes for that. There’s no statements from the developers on the games website, the steam community page or anywhere else related to the game that I could find.
Also 3 player Co-op seems a bit odd. Usually in games like this we get 4. I know there’s only 3 characters to choice from and maybe we get more and they introduce 4 player co-op but nothing about that has been confirmed that I’m aware of so for now what you see is what you get.
While were on the subject of the uncertain I need to bring something up. EvilVEvil doesn’t have an ending. It literally just stops like it was a 6 issue comic book mini series you don’t have the last 2 issues of. Again one could assume we will get one but who knows?
Performance
Honestly there’s not much to complain about here. Everything ran at a pretty solid 60FPS and the temps on the GPU an CPU stayed pretty cool. Not far from idle actually. One odd thing I noticed in the menu options there’s a 90 and 120 FPS option even though the game is hard locked at 60. That seems strange. Maybe this is something they intend on patching in at some point? I’m not sure.
There really wasn’t any bugs, or glitches or disappearing walls or enemy’s or anything of that kind. Honestly is a world where we’ve gotten used to shooter’s releasing like that I’m happy to report this.
Clik here to view.
Steam Deck
Before I get into this keep in mind this games Steam Deck compatibility is label as “Unknown”. Basically it hasn’t been verified or optimized for the Deck. As this is the case I won’t be holding this section against EvilVEvil.
While attempting to cap the FPS at 60 the frame rate ends up all over the place. I only played mission 4 on the deck and in those 18ish minutes the frame rate hit between 25-50. It was never very consistent and even when trying to lock at 30 it still didn’t hold very well. The spikes being between 25 and 30 might sound better but for me even a few point drop can be jarring at such a low frame rate and it happened a lot.
Conclusion
EvilVEvil is sort of hard to put a score on. I enjoyed it for what it was, but what it was was incomplete. The co-op might as well not exist based on the fact that next to no one is playing it, and since I was looking forward to this aspect, I was extremely disappointed. There’s also the question of getting a season two, which could solve this game’s issues but we have to wait and see. As I’ve said before, I can’t grade what I can’t play. Only what I can.
Clik here to view.
EvilVEvil released on July 16th for Playstation 5, Xbox Series X/S and PC.
The post EvilVEvil Review appeared first on Gamer Social Club.