El Paso, Elsewhere Review (Norbody)
This game is awesome- a paranormal Max Payne with werewolves, mummies and vampires. It's also weird as hell, has fantastic sound design and really takes you on a journey across 50 different levels that take 8-20 hours to complete depending on what difficulty you play.
The only major issues with the game have to do with repetitive chunks of game play and some nonsensical level design. The whole idea is that the protagonist is going into "the void", a nondescript mess of various map assets like slaughterhouses and hotel rooms with no ceiling, to rescue his lover. The story is convoluted and has many cringeworthy moments, and the cutscenes are just long bouts of exposition. Max Payne told a much better story with just a few comic panels between each level, but this game seems to want to get the player lost in thought the way its protagonist seems to be.
The combat is great, as you have ragdoll physics and each weapon serves a specific function. The rifle can knock out long range enemies with ease and the molotovs can set up a barrier to block off a hallway from incoming enemies. There are some weird suit of armor enemies that are best dispatched with the shotgun. The game also gives you "stakes" which are melee weapons that deal devastating damage up close. These are great because if you run out of ammo you might be able to stake enemies coming at you as a last resort.
Generally speaking, the enemies in this game are great, as each one has its own specific movement and attack programming. This is one way I like this game better than Max Payne since you occasionally need to use specific maneuvering to take out enemies in a certain order to survive. The werewolves jump across the screen to attack the player but they have little health. Unfortunately, the game uses certain enemies way too often. There is a female creature that is always above the player and launches an instakill projectile. It would be okay if you confronted her once in a while, but the game likes to throw her in every other room in the second half of the game.
You can slow down time and do slow mo jump like in Max Payne, but the jump is pretty useless since it drains the bar way too fast. Rolling makes you invincible so if you play on hard you want to roll everywhere to avoid dying. You can really play this game anyway you want since the game lets you activate cheats like infinite ammo and increase enemy health at the start of each game. Still, I got really frustrated playing this game. The last 1/3 of the game is really annoying because no new game play mechanics or enemies are introduced. It's just a long slog through a bunch of areas you've already seen rearranged to keep whatever semblance of a "story" there is going.
I actually kind of loved playing through this despite its flaws. There are two difficult boss fights that are very well-designed. I think if the level design was a little bit more careful and deliberate this would actually be a better game than Max Payne 2 and 3, though it doesn't come close to the original Max Payne. And while I compare it to Max Payne a lot this game is very much its own thing, not quite being film noire but existing in kind of a dreadful washed out pulp comic without much of a story to tell but a large amount of vibe to express.