izigame.me

Before I get into anything, I'd like to state that I played this game day 1, refunded it because it was just terrible in every way. Then I played it on my PS5 when it was free with PS+ in January 2024 and I did indeed complete it, but not to 100%, then I got it on a humble bundle so I came back to it on PC and, after completing the game on hard, I still have the same opinion of Evil West, but now I can actually write a review about the game.
Before I get into the actual review, first a quick disclaimer!
This review is MY opinion, MY own personal experience and MY thoughts. I am brutally honest when it comes to reviewing games. If you do not like my opinion, my time or respect my personal experience, please move on.

Cons

⚫The characters didn't seem interesting in the slightest. If anything they felt rather bland. More on this explained below.
⚫The characters #2 - The Voice acting for them seems... poor at times. They all sound the exact same. What I mean by this is that they don't sound panicked, scared, angry, injured e.t.c. It's like they don't have any emotions. Certain parts on throughout the game they are supposed to be angry or shouting but you can tell that they were all in a studio voice recording sadly.
⚫I have hit several enemies into "out-of-bounds" areas and somehow they have survived, making me wait 5-10 minutes before I realise what's happened. This has happened a LOT. I have seen countless people mention this issue since the game's release. Really sad to see they couldn't fix it. Here is a screenshot of what I mean:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3373613295
⚫ I have been caught on random bumps on the terrain and I have been unable to move from that spot unless I restart my checkpoint/mission or the game.
⚫The Story is rather bland. Nothing "unique" really happens and It did not make me want to keep playing at times with just how... poorly written it felt. I am not sure if I just "couldn't get into it" or not but, something just felt off.
⚫The difficulty - easy, medium and hard are all basically the same difficulty. I know in the past that Easy, medium and hard were extremely difficult for some reason, and yes, this got fixed, I tried normal first, it was WAY to easy. Moved to hard, ok a little challenge but still to easy for myself, personally. Then I put it on EVIL... by gosh... what is that difficulty spike.. that is just crazy hard. Also, I know that it says "EVIL NOT INTENDED FOR FIRST PLAY-THROUGH" but this is forcing me to do another play through.
⚫ The combat seems rather dull once you learn a "combo", if you will, you can just use it for the rest of the game, Maybe not on EVIL difficulty but I just felt so damn bored of the combat by chapter 7 or 8. So here is how it went for me - Once I learned a skill, I used it over and over again because it was way to op. Yeah I tried this on EVIL, and you cannot do this on Evil as well as the other difficulties.
⚫ The Skills - Zapper slam controls everything basically but flies, but you can pull the flies to you or you can weak spot kill the flies instantly. I netted practically all the combat achievements because I just used the same combos over and over again.
⚫The Skills #2 - The "zapper" dash ability you get has no cooldown. You can infinitely pull and dash towards enemies as much as you want.
⚫There is basically no exploration to be had. Yeah you can "look around" but everything, collectables, are basically placed in your directed path. If you miss one, the game is extremely linear so there is no way of telling when there's a "PONR" (point of no return) meaning you are forced to replay an ENTIRE mission to find that 1 or 2 pesky missing collectables.
⚫I tried coop with a friend and every single issue started to show. For some reasonCoop is just broken. Playing with a friend and one of us crash's when we are in our upgrade menu. One of us constantly kept stuttering. The revive button is ANY button if your friend dies so if you get close to their dead body, any button revives.
⚫The Enemies #1 - The "suicider" enemy or explosive enemy cannot chain explode onto other enemies which is a shame.
⚫The Enemies #2 - every single enemy can attack you at the same time, even if they ARE offscreen. So doing the last few chapters was just brutal and pure chaotic. Like what, 6 mini-bosses all at the same time... are you kidding me... now I gotta do this again on EVIL.... ugh.
⚫The games last update was just about 2 years ago. Which means coop will never be fixed and neither will any other underlying issue.

Pros

⚫There's an arachnophobia mode for all those people that can't stand the little critters.
⚫I loved the electric shield (zapper) EGS combo and that follow up is just, YES. I also loved zapper slam, that was really fun to play with. So what I am saying is - it has flashy cool abilities to play around with.
⚫There is plenty of different types of enemies to be killed. Each one has its own abilities and weakness's and they all seem uniquely designed which was also pretty good.
⚫The soundtrack was pretty damn good. I saved a few songs personally. It really suited the game.
⚫The weapon upgrades and attacks are really flashy and I loved the electrical augment weapons

My Verdict

After all of THAT is said, I just cannot recommend a game that has clearly been abandoned, has a multitude of issues/bugs e.t.c and has no replay ability behind it.
I have seen so many people ask for a horde mode or a rogue-like/lite mode which would have been AWESOME, but we will never see that come to light sadly.
Such a good idea/concept of a game but squandered so easily and abandoned way to quickly, They could have added so much into this game. DLC and Gamemodes mainly but instead they added in a permadeath mode that awards you with a very "crappy" gear set, that's the only award for doing permadeath... not even an achievement.

3/10. It would have been a good game but sadly, the bugs and un-optimisation ruins the experience ten-fold