EvilVEvil Review – Cyberpunk Vampires

Every once in a while, we get a game that features vampires prominently, often putting players in the shoes of these creatures of the night, and involving heavy philosophical questions like the nature of humanity when confronted with the beast that lives within. EvilVEvil is a game that promises to make players feel like awesome vampires, complete with magical abilities, hordes of enemies to blast through, and of course, some slick weaponry.

EvilVEvil is a 3-player co-op shooter that takes place in the year 2099. Shortly after waking up from an incredibly deep slumber, players are tasked with taking on the forces of a mysterious cult that, through some incredibly convoluted plan that involves portals to summon demons, wants to destroy the world by summoning a sinister enemy. And that’s really all the story you’re going to get from the game. Owing to its pacing, EvilVEvil doesn’t really offer up a lot of downtime between its action that would allow for some exposition, so the vast majority of the story essentially plays out through conversations that happen during missions.

Fundamentally, however, the story in EvilVEvil is essentially an excuse to set players off on 12 missions to take on the cult. The trio of playable vampires are referred to as “Daywalkers”—vampires that can essentially walk around in the world without fearing sunlight—and the distant future setting could have potentially offered up some fun story quirks, blending genres like urban fantasy and cyberpunk to offer up something unique. Unfortunately, we don’t really get any of that here.

When it comes to pure gameplay, EvilVEvil feels like a competent fast-paced shooter. The weapons are fun to fire and there’s a decent variety, the movement is quick, and you’re essentially encouraged to never be standing still. This is further complemented by fancy abilities that, depending on your character, define your role in the group. Mashaka, for instance, is equipped with a short-range teleport and a fireball as his special abilities, defining him as the mid-range fighter of the group. Victoria, on the other hand, is supposed to be more of a close-range damage dealer, with abilities that allow her to dash through groups of enemies and summon ghosts to kill things for her. Capping off the trio is Leon, who can jump in the air and slam the ground, or pull enemies closer to him, making him the unofficial front-line tank.

"The weapons are fun to fire and there’s a decent variety, the movement is quick, and you’re essentially encouraged to never be standing still."

The more conventional weaponry in the game is made up of the typical shooter archetypes, with assault rifles, snipers, shotguns, SMGs, and hand cannons. There isn’t really anything too unique about the arsenal of weapons available in EvilVEvil. How the game sets itself apart from some other shooters, however, is with the ability for players to dabble in some light weapon modification. These modifications come in the form of mods that provide some light bonuses that are essentially straightforward stat increases, like larger magazine size or increased critical damage.

Personal mods, on the other hand, are way more interesting, but still end up feeling wildly underutilized. As they level up, players unlock Artifacts, which grant you special passive abilities. These abilities range from defensive ones, like having damage reduction after feeding off an enemy, to ones that prompt more aggressive play, like getting regenerating health or getting an exp bonus when you get a kill with your abilities. Again, these passive abilities never really define your play style, and as a result, end up feeling like little more than nice bonuses.

The modding system ties into the game’s core progression too; using a weapon as you play through a mission grants you experience points for both your character as well as your weapons. Leveling up your character gives you access to more artifacts, while leveling up your weapons unlocks more mods, while also increasing your weapon’s capacity for mods. Weapon mods themselves never really feel that important, and even on the highest difficulties, assuming competent gameplay from you and your co-op allies, you’re never going to feel like you absolutely needed the 8 percent higher critical hit chance from that one weapon mod.

"Passive abilities never really define your play style, and as a result, end up feeling like little more than nice bonuses."

Most mods and artifacts you unlock can also be upgraded by making use of the in-game currencies and resources earned from killing enemies and completing missions. At best, these upgrades act as straight stat increases, and never really veer off into more interesting additions like potentially adding more bonuses or modifiers.

The progression system is rather straightforward, and ultimately, quite shallow. The fact that weapons are locked depending on your chosen character, requiring grinding to unlock, for example, the assault rifle on Leon, is quite disheartening too. Decisions like these make switching up characters between your co-op buddies quite painful, since you’ll lose much of the toolkit you likely got accustomed to in the form of your unlocked weapons and their respective mods.

Visually, EvilVEvil has some strong art direction, but generally tends to look pretty underwhelming. The game’s general visual design feels especially rough when you take its UI elements into account. Right from the main menu, the title looks like not much development time was devoted to making its UI look decent, or even thematic.

"The game’s general visual design feels especially rough when you take its UI elements into account."

Even player and enemy models look relatively bland, and the interesting art design is let down by sub-par graphics. This seems to be the general theme of the EvilVEvil, since its different missions tend to showcase quite a few interesting ideas for levels, ranging from a warehouse to even an abandoned city block, all of which feel held back because of the game’s fidelity not being able to match up to the vision.

Generally speaking, EvilVEvil is a competent shooter that feels let down by some of its more technical aspects and faulty design decisions. Locking weapon unlocks behind character levels, for example, punishes switching around different characters for variety. The game’s visuals are also quite disappointing, holding back what appears to be strong artistic vision, with interesting ideas for levels, cool guns, and unique character designs.

Throw on top the fact that EvilVEvil doesn’t really have any story worth writing home about, and all of the exposition taking place through a voice just telling you the story while you’re frantically trying to fend off hordes of demons takes away even the plot as a reasonable excuse to play the game. There’s no shortage of competent co-op shooters in the world, especially in the indie market, so just having good guns and movement isn’t really enough anymore. Ultimately, EvilVEvil doesn’t really have enough going on to recommend it over other indie titles like Roboquest, or even more classic co-op shooters like the seminal Left 4 Dead 2.

This game was reviewed on PC.