Who Gave Nosferatu A Gun?
HIGH Plenty of blood and bullets.
LOW Three thousand years of slumber and apparently, exposition.
WTF They fly now? They fly now.
In the recent trend of vampire-themed games, EvilVEvil is the most recent to try and take a stab at it.
Developed by Toadman Interactive, EvilVEvil is a first-person real-time action shooter to be played with up to three others. The game follows a small group of recently-awakened vampires fighting against a ‘Cult’ led by the mysterious Zagreus. Players will choose one of three awakened vampires to control as they shoot through waves of the cult and the undead.
As of now the story is unfinished, hosting eleven levels with a variety of different maps and objectives slowly revealing information surrounding the cult’s plans.
To start with, making EvilVEvil a turn-your-brain-off style shooter was a great choice. I found myself easily entertained at the most basic level, shooting large waves of enemies and watching my score go up. This is where EvilVEvil excels, offering mindless and satisfying bloodshed.
Each character available has a unique selection of guns and skills to use which adds much-needed variety to the gameplay. For instance, Victoria utilizes smaller firearms such as her pistol or SMG, and her abilities include a dash and a shadow summon that can take out a few enemies for you. On the other hand, the a different character may use a teleport, a slam attack or larger guns to take out waves. The main takeaway is that the three characters have distinct playstyles to offer variety and replayability.
On top of having these abilities to play with, EvilVEvil also introduces a few additional mechanics.
Now a staple of the shooter genre, perks and weapon mods can be unlocked as players progress. As a vampire uses their weapons to shred through waves of enemy cult members, they retain a final score that goes towards unlocking character perks and weapon modifications. Unfortunately, this is where EvilVEvil falters in part, especially when considering the score system.
As I was playing alongside friends, the scores were wildly different and seemingly arbitrary. One person would suddenly receive ten thousand points for opening a door, or on one occasion after I activated an objective, it gave another player points instead of me. This led to situations where after a level we would have a huge disparity between points, meaning one player was randomly behind on leveling perks and mods — it felt strange and broken.
Another of these mechanics which added some variety despite messy execution was the ‘feeding’. For a player to heal in EvilVEvil, players need to find one unsuspecting victim of the cult and feed from their blood — undead enemies won’t do.
At first this was great. As a vampire, I expect to be able to suck the blood from someone to gain some benefit or vitality. In this case, a bonus to shooting speed alongside regenerating some health would be a great incentive… if it wasn’t buggy and inconsistent. There were multiple moments where I would grab onto an enemy and either not receive health, or the animation would just cancel. With this being buggy and the only way to heal, it made playing at higher difficulties frustrating, rather than challenging.
Speaking of EvilVEvil lacking polish, let’s move on to the story and the missions available.
Now I’m not going to lie, the story here is simple with cliches aplenty. This would be fine usually — titles like DOOM and Left 4 Dead 2 thrive on mowing down waves of enemies and only offer story as a background feature, with a few bits here and there pointing to a wider narrative. With EvilVEvil, there’s almost no space to enjoy the carnage before the narrator is in one’s ear revealing the tenth hidden plot point that honestly I didn’t care about. Overall, it’s too much exposition and explaining which just adds to the narrative confusion, rather than offering any clarity on the story at large.
Besides this weak plot, the scope of content also suffers hugely. The maps are unique and well-crafted such as?, but hardly any of them are shown off to the extent they should be. Players are forced from point A to point B with repetitive objectives, and there are few instances where a dramatic ‘stand and fight’ moment happens. With the current story only being eleven levels, easily finished in a few hours with no end boss fight, it doesn’t feel complete or rounded — as if the scope of the game was misjudged entirely during production.
Despite these faults, EvilVEvil shows potential. I found myself going through all of the levels back to back while enjoying the mindless carnage it had to offer. If the devs were to pivot, scrapping the overcomplicated plot and instead focusing on polishing all aspects of the gameplay, the entire experience would be better for it. In its current state, with just a short selection of levels that take a couple of hours to complete while not being fully optimized? EvilVEvil‘s fangs aren’t as sharp as they should be.
Rating: 6 out of 10
— Tom Porter
Disclosures: This game is developed and produced by Toadman Interactive. It is currently available on XBX/S, PS5 and PC. This copy of the game was obtained via publisher and reviewed on the PC. Approximately 3 hours of play were devoted to the single-player mode, and the game was completed. Four hours of play were spent in multiplayer modes.
Parents: This game is not rated by the ESRB. The game includes extreme violence with the use of guns and bloody violence. There are also monsters including demonic imagery and these may frighten younger audiences.
Colorblind Modes: There are no colorblind modes available.
Deaf & Hard of Hearing Gamers: This game offers subtitles. The subtitles cannot be altered and/or resized. All voice lines in the game are given subtitles at the side of the screen. Without sound there are very few limitations, as objectives are very clearly given visually. There are no issues with fighting or gameplay with a lack of sound here. It’s fully accessible.
Remappable Controls: Yes, this game offers fully remappable controls. This game does not offer a controller map diagram, but movement is on WASD. Left Click to fire, Right Click to aim. Q is a movement ability, E is a damage ability. Interact is F and Jump is on Space.
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