Review copy provided by Daybreak Game Company.
Evil V Evil is such a game that when the Gods descend on Earth and demand to know the gamest game that ever gamed, the people will point to Evil V Evil and say “that one I guess.” Evil V Evil is such a game that it once attempted to compete in the novel Olympics and was disqualified for being in fact a game.
For a game that talks about ancient mysteries, the real ancient mystery is what the deal with Evil V Evil is. I don’t say this to be mean but everything about this game feels like a free to play shooter that would have been released back in 2008-2009 to capitalize on the success of Left 4 Dead. Of course back then it would have been published by Nexon who would pump it with rented guns and then shut it down after six months with one post-launch content update.
Evil V Evil is a cooperative shooter game where the player takes the role of one of presently three vampires and undertakes a series of missions ala Left 4 Dead but with no chatter during the levels. Each level is a progression down a linear corridor with some more open arena spaces where you flip switches, kill enemies, blow up stuff, and kill enemies.
I have to assume Toadman Interactive has something up their sleeves for post-launch support because right now the game has three characters and twelve levels, and you’ll get through those levels pretty quick. I didn’t finish the levels for this review, but only because I’ve put a ton of time into the game during the betas so I’ve got it pretty well down for this review.
Evil V Evil calls itself fast-paced and it almost feels like it’s in fast-forward with how the enemies move sometimes. The biggest fault I can give this game is that you’ll be fighting the same cultists virtually from start to finish, and there’s not a lot of variety. Also the color melting in the art style just makes everything blend together anyway.
Shooting is fine, albeit with perhaps too much recoil on a lot of the weapons. Each character has their own set of weapons and unlocks access to the bigger pool as you level them up. I’m not a fan of this because one vampire has a shotgun from the start, and another vampire doesn’t unlock it until much later on but starts with only a choice of the burst-fire pistol as their anti-shield weapon meaning if you hate the burst-fire shield your choices are 1.) suck it up and deal with it until you grind enough levels to unlock a different gun or 2.) don’t play that hero.
You are required to bring two weapons with you with one of them being a normal bullet shooty weapon and the other being a shield-breaker gun. It’s mandatory, although the game did allow you to accidentally choose two of one class and brick your run because each damage type does barely any damage against enemies of the other variety.
Combat is a manner of constantly moving and balancing your abilities and feeding. You have to feed to regain health, and your abilities involve movement and damage effects. As you level up you gain access to artifacts that modify your gameplay more, changing abilities or dropping more ammo and stuff.
The balancing right now is all kinds of stupid. You have to feed on enemies in order to gain your health back, but the feeding process doesn’t stop enemies from targeting and attacking you which means if you attack a guy in a group, you’re probably going to lose more health than you gain especially during the second or so where you are stationary after feeding.
This is where Evil V Evil is its most not fun, because the game loves throwing you into very compact spaces where enemies are close together and feeding is completely impossible at medium or above, so you just kinda have to let yourself die or make a break and pray the game’s RNG doesn’t let them target you fast enough.
Evil V Evil also makes it hard to look forward to stuff. I can see that an upcoming level will net me a new skin for my vampire but for some reason the game won’t show me what that skin looks like. The story itself is very threadbare and hard to follow/care about because it isn’t really dived into that much. Left 4 Dead is still the gold standard with characters dropping bits of lore/personality as you play and giving reasons to go multiple rounds on the same levels.
My review might make it sound like I didn’t enjoy Evil V Evil, but I actually liked the gunplay. There’s something here but I have the strong feeling that given the current state of the gaming industry and where this title is now, EVE is going to need some time in the oven to bring out its own potential, and I’m not sure if the consumer side is going to show up and wait around.
Either way I’ll be playing this still once it goes live. You know, alongside the two hundred trillion other games I’m trying to juggle.
MMO Fallout 