Evil West

This feels like a loveletter to the PS3/Xbox360 era. Its unapolagetic about being a game, fun and pure carnage take priority over realism. The atmosphere and setting are extremely well done, and the combat is very engaging. It does have some clunky interactions in the combat, and the shader caching stutter was almost enough to make me drop the game in the first 15 minutes (9070XT and 7800x3D). Every new enemy, animation, or environment caused significant stuttering when it was rendered for the first time, to the point where a new attack from a boss would guarantee being hit during the performance dip. That was extremely frustrating, but its the only strong negative I experienced during the game. The story was just enough to give reasons to go to new environments and see new enemies. It wasn't bad, and it felt like there was a lot of passion behind it, but it never pretended to be the main focus. Playing on the higher difficulties was very satisfying, and scratches the fast-paced arena combat itch. Highly recommend playing on keyboard and mouse to fully utilize the ranged interactions. I hope this gets a sequel/prequel, or at least gets repcated again from this studio. Overall it was a treat.