EvilVEvil Preview - A Promising Strategy and Supernatural Shooter Game That Needs Polish

There are not many games that feel remarkably polished when they get into closed beta. This is certainly true if the video game in question doesn’t even have an official release date.  Honestly, that’s not a surprise but rather an expectation. In fact, anyone who thinks that games in development are going to be perfect should have their head examined.  Still, I was pleasantly surprised at how playable EvilVEvil is in their current closed beta.  

It’s Literally Evil Versus Evil

EvilVEvil from Toadman Interactive is a first person shooter, an online multiplayer game, and a co-op campaign.  The idea is that vampires are being awoken from a long-term slumber earlier than expected to deal with the threat of a cult that seeks to play with things they don’t understand. To that end, I have now seen enough demons fighting on the same side of a battle as humans to make me realize that perhaps EvilVEvil is just really good at political commentary, but I digress.

In EvilVEvil, players choose one of three legendary vampires to take on the hordes of undead and their human worshippers. Each vampire has two basic weapons - one for shooting bullets and one for shooting sunlight.  While the vampires aren’t affected by sunlight like their ancestors, other undead creatures are torn apart by it.  Toadman Interactive does a great job setting the tone and the premise of EvilVEvil by reminding players early on that yes, you’re fighting evil forces but are also evil.

What About The Story?

Unfortunately, that’s where the story falls apart for me.  The first mission in a game about the undead is about stopping a drug run that the undead are using to--  I’m not fully sure I ever really understood why I had to go bust Pablo Escobar. That’s the key issue. The story is hokey and to be frank, it’s completely unnecessary.

EvilVEvil is a fast paced shooter that combines the tactical playstyle of Halo or Call of Duty with the more whimsical ability based style of Overwatch. It’s an extraction shooter that is raid based and depends on objectives to take you through each mission.  It has Destiny or Warhammer vibes and If you take it at face value, it’s a lot of fun. The art style is reminiscent of the comic book-esque style of Borderlands adding to the whimsy. Using the vampires’ natural abilities to be faster, stronger, and magical, with the basic need to defend themselves using human weapons is utterly brilliant.  

In fact, what EvilVEvil is doing from a game-play perspective is so much better than the storytelling that it makes me wish the storytelling wasn’t happening.  It detracts so much from the amazing experience that simply playing EvilVEvil offers.  Yes, give me the premise that I’m evil and I’m fighting other evil forces.  But for a game that could literally be just that - a shoot-em-up adventure fighting supernatural forces and the jerks that set them loose, EvilVEvil is so chatty that no matter what is being said, I just never started to care. 

So far as I can tell, the story isn’t even told through the use of cutscenes but rather Persephida, an NPC who gives you instructions and talks the whole way through the mission.  If she was just giving you objectives, it would be fine but she also adds in a lot of lore.  I think about the early days of Overwatch and how I really hated that there wasn’t a campaign. I still feel like that was a huge misstep because there is a right way to do a co-op campaign inside an objective based shooter. Unfortunately, this isn’t it.

It’s Dangerous To Go Alone!

EvilVEvil is definitely intended to be played with others. Yes, I tried it solo because that’s how I play games but I quickly realized this isn’t preferable.  Even at the lowest difficulty, EvilVEvil is needlessly hard, a problem that is more or less fixed as soon as the multiplayer is embraced. Unlike the unreliable multiplayer in Rocksteady’s recent Suicide Squad: Kill The Justice League, EvilVEvil seems to have unlocked the secret to a good matchmaking. Matchmaking begins and ends in the main lobby. After selecting a mission, matchmaking will pair players up with others who have selected the same mission but that mission doesn’t start until everyone has joined and readied up.  

Whereas Suicide Squad threw me into a mission already in progress and caused me to miss a cutscene and see a spoiler, EvilVEvil ensured that everyone was on the same page. The irony is that protecting the continuity of the story seems so much less important here but it is nice that players won’t have the jarring experience of popping into a mission that’s already underway. The downside is that if a player drops out, there is no one to take their place and the mission becomes exponentially more difficult. This could easily be fixed by having a full squad in every mission and where a real person is missing, a bot takes their place.  Right now, that’s not the case.

Conclusion

Don’t hear what I’m not saying. I’m not saying EvilVEvil is a bad game. I’m not saying people should avoid it. I’m certainly not saying I’ll never play it again.  I’m saying it needs some work. That’s okay! It’s what this closed beta process is for.  Feedback is crucial to Toad Interactive putting out a good product.

Understand that EvilVEvil is still in development. I’ve been hard on Toad Interactive not because I want to crap all over their game.  In fact, I think EvilVEvil has a lot of potential and given the right amount of TLC could become a major hit in the genre.  There are however some glaring issues that need to be resolved and this is the time to do it.  If these issues aren’t addressed before launch, I fear that EvilVEvil could be a great concept that no one pays attention to.