Evil West

Evil West is a 2022 third-person action game developed by Flying Wild Hog and published by Focus Entertainment, released November 22, 2022 for PC, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One/Series X|S after a two-month delay from September. It holds Metacritic scores of 73 on PC and PS5 and 75 on Xbox Series, an OpenCritic recommendation rate of 58%, and the specific afterlife those numbers predict: lukewarm launch reviews, a Very Positive Steam rating, and a steady stream of “what do you guys think of Evil West?” and “it made me miss this forgotten genre” threads from players who found it later and loved it. The genre they miss is the mid-2000s character-action brawler — linear chapters, arena fights, a skill tree, a boss at the end — and Evil West is an unapologetic revival of it, with cowboys and vampires.

Technical Specifications

The Rentier Institute vs. the Sanguisuge

In an alternate 1890s frontier, vampires — the Sanguisuge — have preyed on humanity for centuries, held in check by the secret, government-funded Rentier Institute. Jesse Rentier, the founder’s son and one of its last field agents, hunts the high-ranking vampire Peter D’Abano alongside retired agent Edgar Gravenor, only for D’Abano’s daughter Felicity to storm the Institute’s manor and infect Jesse’s father, William. The campaign is the revenge chase that follows, through mining towns, swamps, and vampire strongholds, to a finale that leaves Jesse and the Calico cell’s Emilia Blackwell rebuilding the Institute from its ashes. The tone is pulp with a grin — gore, one-liners, a hero who punches a vampire’s heart out — and the story was consistently graded as serviceable scaffolding for the fights, which was, by all evidence, the intention.

Gauntlet, Boomstick, and the Bestiary

Combat is the entire argument for the game. Jesse’s Lightning Gauntlet is the centerpiece — melee combos that build electrical charge, a zip-pull to yank enemies in, and executions on stunned foes — woven together with a six-shot Revolver, a lever-action Rifle, the Boomstick shotgun, the Crippling Rod, a flamethrower, and explosive bundles, all upgradeable through a perk tree that genuinely changes how fights flow. The design cites Devil May Cry for its combo logic and 2018’s God of War for its weight, and arenas are built for environmental kills — spike traps, exploding barrels, a well-timed kick. The bestiary is the other half of the search traffic: the mutated Ghaul, blood-draining Leechers, aerial Screeching Devils, the Hive Crone, parasitic Infected Vessels, and bosses like The Parasiter — a roster that forces weapon-switching rather than a single dominant loop. Critics agreed the combat was excellent; VG247 spoke for the dissenters in calling the level design “outdated,” and the 73 is those two opinions averaged.

Co-op and the Second Opinion

The full campaign supports two-player online co-op — a second Jesse drops in with his own progression — which the community rates as the best way to play and the reason the game’s Steam rating sits well above its critical one. The reddit consensus, three years on, is near-uniform: a 12-to-15-hour throwback that does one thing (make hitting vampires feel fantastic) extremely well and makes no apology for its linearity, puzzle-free chapters, and PS2-era structure — a game that reviewers measured against 2022 and players measure against the brawlers they grew up with. Performance held up too; Digital Foundry’s tech review noted solid console builds and PC analyses found UE4 behaving.

Where to Play It Today

Evil West is on Steam, PlayStation 4/5, and Xbox One/Series X|S, discounting deeply and often (regularly under $15, sometimes under $10), with co-op cross-progression intact. Flying Wild Hog moved on to other projects, no sequel has been announced, and the game remains exactly what the “forgotten genre” threads say it is: the best two-player vampire-punching brawler on the market, chiefly because it is nearly the only one. If you liked the studio’s Shadow Warrior 3, this is the same energy in a different holster.