A prolonged session with EvilVEvil left Associate Editor Ted Litchfield and I bleary-eyed, cotton-mouthed, heads both pounding. Whatever you do, do not play EvilVEvil after a meal. Ted let out a long wheeze, laid low by a stomach ache, while I felt the physical echoes of the type of hangover I haven’t known for years. Ted struggled to think of a worse game while I left to get a glass of water to ease my nausea. Eventually he got it.
The Land Before Time on Playstation 1. On GameFAQs it has a single review, from 2001, declaring “this is the worst game I’ve ever played.”
There is no aspect of EvilVEvil that rises above the level of bad. The graphics are muddy, with low fidelity textures and character models that invoke the psychos from Borderlands with none of the flair or reactivity. Environments are especially uninspired, a tedious deluge of black, steel, and red that makes every shootout feel like it’s taking place inside the AMD Adrenaline Launcher. There’s a nauseating Jet Set Radio-style jerkiness to the animation that just makes everything look wrong, worsened by an awkwardly quick, all-or-nothing movement speed and a barrage of frame drops.
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
Taken together, the result is a game that is just unbelievably unpleasant to move around in. Neither I nor my fellow victim have ever gotten motion sickness from a game before, but an extended session of EvilVEvil left us with nausea, lockjaw, and the sweats. It’s ironic that EvilVEvil cribs so much of its aesthetic from the 1998 Blade film, because the physical experience of actually playing it is like coming up on bad ecstasy at the Blood Rave.
The Blood Rave, of course, had awesome music, something sorely absent in EvilVEvil. It’s not a soundtrack I loathe, but there are better sample pack demo tracks on my desktop. It feels like such a missed opportunity, especially with that connection to Blade: acid house never goes out of style, and the timeless squelch of a Roland TB-303 would have surely improved my time with EvilVEvil.
The actual combat of EvilVEvil is tedium incarnate, channeling the worst of pre-Taken King Destiny 1. You mow down hundreds if not thousands of identical looking braindead cultists, push buttons to open doors, and pick up glowing red orbs to open portals. Some of the only joy I found in EvilVEvil came from the occasionally hilariously dumb design of its maps. There’s a nightclub level (duh) with a cannabis grow op in the back office with only a few dozen plants, which means that this all-powerful vampire cult could be pulling in anywhere from four to seven hundred dollars a month (revenue, not profit).
There’s a Destiny-like ability system, a standard allotment of fireballs and ground pound attacks that were at no point any more useful than the assault rifle with effectively unlimited ammunition. Those abilities are on cooldowns, which can be shortened by feeding on. Feeding grants a nauseating, irrelevant bonus to movement speed. When we died, it was typically because three dozen guys instantly teleported all around us and melted through our health.
Combat is awful. Non-existent recoil, sights that do nothing except make the motion sickness worse by dialing in the field of view, and tinny sound effects dramatically undercutting the “power fantasy” that EvilVEvil is selling on its store page. Guns are markedly less responsive than those in similarly red and edgy games from two generations back:I loaded up The Darkness 2 for a quick palette cleanser after Ted punched out and was immediately brought back to life by weapons that spat hot death that roared with fury.
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
(Image credit: Toadman Interactive)
A quick session of Payday 2 was similarly reviving, and foisted on me a grim revelation.
There is no modern contemporary release for EvilVEvil to be weighed against. It is more expensive and less feature rich than Left 4 Dead 2. It looks, sounds, and feels significantly worse than Payday 2. The missions invoke the tedium of the Destiny 1 beta. I find the notion that someone would buy (and god forbid, pressure two friends to buy) EvilVEvil anxiety-inducing. You assuredly have better co-op shooters in your Steam library already, and if by some chance you don’t, well, Destiny 2 is free to play. Don’t let this energy vampire anywhere near your gaming PC.
