Evil West seems like a mix of God of War and Doom. Like God of War there is a cohesive story line you play through, chests and bags of gold give you the resources to upgrade and unlock some perks, enemies drop heals on defeat or weak point hits, and while weapons need to to recharge, there is no to craft or pick up ammo. Like Doom there are lore pages to pickup, a mix of different guns you need to swap between to be effective, bloody finishers, and some gory environments. The writing was fun, and the graphics looked good. While the mix of God of War and Doom mechanics can work well, it can also be a bit overdone. Swarms can inhibit the weak point targeting, there seems to be an over use of enemies that can heal tanks with impunity (like Ghaul), and enemies are a bit spongy with even minions requiring multiple hits or combos to kill, even on story mode difficulty. While the graphics look good, they are also very demanding at the upper settings. Even on a modern 20 GB 7900 XT the epic graphics preset can push the card over 100 C at times. Also most will likely want to load the game from a SSD- a business grade Segate Exos HDD and 128 GB RAM worked, but it could still take some time to load. The game ran fine on Ubuntu 24.04 LTS through Heroic using WINE GE Latest. No crashes or freezing, generally smooth.
It won't compare with bigger budget games, but choices matter in the game, stability is good, and graphics and story are decent. Combat was a bit mixed for me- Better balanced than what Jensen faced in Dues Ex, or something like Elden Ring (where all enemies are powerful, and many are basically mini-bosses), but I still prefer not needing to button mash as much. Unfortunately, that seems to be the way most games are made. The combat here is based on successive uninterrupted attacks getting stronger, but stating out weak. I had focused on staff and technomancy skills rather than becoming a jack of all trades. I had trouble with some side quest later in the game, where I couldn't get where was needed, and it failed when I left thinking hose areas were tied to another quest and required a return the way earlier side quests had. However main story quests always seemed to have a way to complete them.
First getting the game to run was a hassle. It would just give me a white screen and some sound, and no response to keys like space/enter/esc. I hit F11 to get back to the desktop, and then saw the game. Any time I tried to set it to full screen i would just get a white screen. As far as the controls..it responds to my button press on my Logitech F310 gamepad, but does not complete the corresponding task properly, such as tap X, tap X, hold X in the tutorial fight. Since the actions fail, so do many fights where you get mobbed. this makes the game near unplayable. I personally am not a fan of real spongy enemies which this game seems to have. I thought the concept of playing an undercover cop who ends up living too much in both worlds might be an interesting game, and overall reviews looked good, but i regret getting this game.
I have the game on Steam, and suffer the same crashes with a modern Ryzen 9 7920X that players suffer with newer Intel CPUs. What I read searching the problem online was that it was still using an unpatched version of the Unreal 4 engine. Sounded like the developer fixing that may fix the game on newer hardware.
I have the Witcher III Complete edition on Steam, so i haven't gotten it here, but Witcher III is one of the best games i have played. The story is extremely well written, the battles with monsters reward understanding of their abilities and weaknesses without pigeon-holing the player into fighting one way, and choices can matter. The biggest thing I would change is the severe drop in experience for completing quests after a certain level. A level cap would be better, respecting what a player may need to unlock all perk slots at the end of Blood and Wine DLC, and have a few points to start with on New Game Plus. Watching for Witcher IV when it comes out.
Even after multiple attempts to re-install I could only get the game to launch successfully once on each time unless I deleted configuration and save files. It seemed as soon as I had a save file, when i would launch the game I got only one frame every several seconds. If I cleared the configuration files and save it would launch fine after rebuilding them, but that makes the game hard to complete. I did spend a day trying to get trough it in one run, but it bugged at the Witch King fight (witch king would not attack, and just looked to be running in place on his mount), and would not progress past it.
I came back to this after playing Starfleet Command III years ago, as I am a fan of TOS/TMP. I understand that the graphics are not as good, and was fine with not being able to customize the loadout like you can in SFC III. However this game seems poorly done in comparison. Phasers on KDF and RSE ships? All ships really? Player photon torpedoes largely just miss enemies even when fired within 8.0 units while NPC seem much more effective. Loadouts don't really fit what w see in the shows/movies- phasers on Klingon and Romulan ships, so missing aft torpedoes aren't any more out of place i guess. Missions can require focus on two or more places at once, but ally AI doesn't seem good enough- really you can only set aggression, not assign them roles. Balance for a single player controlled ship in SFC III worked better. I felt SFC III had a more cohesive storyline, wile this game seems more like random missions with an occasional one that might tie into a story.
Like the 25th Anniversary Star Trek Game, the Linux version did not launch after install (Linux Mint 21.3 (based on Ubuntu 22.04 LTS), and Heroic Games Launcher). The Windows Install also suffered a failure with DOSBox, which Windows would also use to run a DOS-based game. However switching WINE version to Proton Experimental in heroic Games Launcher allowed the game to launch through DOSBox, it just takes longer to launch. I would drop it to 3/5 for that, but didn't want to so on a classic. I hope that gets fixed though. One thing that made this sequel to the 25th Anniversary Star Trek Game fun was that the landing party varied between missions so you get to work with more of the original cast on away missions.
I put 4/5 as the Linux version didn't launch (Linux Mint 21.3 (which is based on the supported Ubuntu Linux and uses it's repositories), and Heroic Games launcher). However installing the Windows version instead launches using DOSBox, which is the same emulator Windows would typically rely on for a DOS-based game. As a young kid I got to play games on the old DOS-based PC, and this was the first Star Trek game I played. One of my parents had been a TOS fan growing, and had me watching the episodes. The graphics are definitely a bit dated- PC graphics ween't even 32-bit at the time, but having the voice acting of the original cast is nice.
