El Paso, Elsewhere Review

El Paso, Elsewhere is a love letter to Max Payne, complete with its iconic gameplay from decades ago, and a story of star crossed lovers, reminiscent of Romeo and Juliet. The demo was an absolute blast to play, but my biggest concern was if the gameplay would remain fresh for the duration of the game and be able to stand shoulder to shoulder with the story. Unfortunately, this fear has been realized as El Paso just becomes overly repetitive with it’s gameplay, environments and enemies.

Breaking Good

Instead of Romeo, you are James Savage, an addict, who finally decides to break good. In the place of Juliet is Draculae, your ex girlfriend and lord of the vampires, who is about to conduct a ritual that will end the world as you know it. The story is engaging, due to its Shakespearean formula and when combined with superb voice acting and cinematic cutscenes, what you have are the same qualities that make you want to binge a Netflix season.

The game is broken down into 50 chapters that should take around 8-10 hours to complete. Having short chapters was a wise choice, as it breaks up the monotony of doing the same thing repeatedly. Shoot some bad guys, mostly mummies and werewolves, rescue some hostages and get back to the elevator as you descend deeper into the void.

Breaking Bad

If we are using the story as a catalyst for what can be done with the enemies and the environments, then the palette should have been infinite, as there should be no limit to what can happen in the void. Instead, environments were mostly limited to motel, tombs and a meat packing plant.

The shooting mechanics feel just like you remember them from 2001, but that joy eventually fades as it quickly becomes rinse and repeat. The same mummy that you see at the start is still there at the end. El Paso had a few boss battles, but they didn’t require much skill. For the most part, the way that the enemies progressed throughout the game was just bigger monster closets.

Although there was variety in the weapons, some felt similar and changing between such a large selection actually became cumbersome during hectic battles. Adding in a slow down during weapon changing would have been the easiest solution, but limiting the weapons to just two or three would have been fine if there was some slight upgrading throughout for damage, range, fire rate and reload speed. This also would have dangled a carrot for exploration.

It also would have been nice to have some type of audio indication when your health was low as things can get hectic and taking your eye off the action wasn’t easy when the hordes get sent your way. There were also a few areas that had frame rate dips, but the solution was usually to restart checkpoint, which is likely a memory issue that will likely get resolved in post launch patch. At the moment, it doesn’t seem like a large concern.

Less is More

Just like Romeo and Juliet, El Paso Elsewhere is a tragedy of what could have been. The fun is there in the beginning but with some refinements on the gameplay, environments and enemies, the focus would have been put on the superb story, excellent voice acting and great direction, where it should have been.

HIGH 7