A few years back, we had to sit my son down and have a sincere heart-to-heart talk about a really annoying behavior he had adopted. He’s a pretty great kid who really doesn’t get into trouble, so this was a big deal to him, but he became downright obsessed with making levels in Super Mario Maker and insisting that my wife and I try each and every one of them and if we refused, he would throw a fit over it. You see, the tantrum wasn’t the problem, it’s that he made the levels impossible to beat and expressed great glee in watching us fail as he planned all along, and we had to really hammer home that if he can’t beat it, how does he expect anyone else to do it? Eventually, this problem worked itself out, and while he would occasionally play this same song and dance again, it got significantly better. Why am I talking about this in my review for El Paso, Elsewhere you ask? Well, someone needed to have this talk with these developers as well. Don’t get me wrong, I beat the game, I enjoyed a fair amount of my time with it, but it was a project, to say the least.
The game is being marketed as a spiritual successor to Max Payne, which it does kind of succeed at by adopting a similar neo-noir thriller story while incorporating the same bullet time dodging through the air mechanic that cemented the face of Sam Lake in every gamer over the age of 30’s brain for the rest of their lives. This will leave a lasting impression on me as well, but for all the wrong reasons. This game is excessively bloated, has horrendous AI, poor design choices, and a laundry list of bugs that I could likely post an entire article about without mentioning anything else in it. I will likely forget a few when we get to those, but just know that if there is a quality assurance team at Strange Scaffold, they should be fired. Immediately.
The game follows James Savage, a former addict by day and monster hunter by night as he sets off to kill his ex Draculae as she intends to complete some ritual that will end the world. This is presented in a way that as the developers intended, feels like it’s in line with the Max and Mona narrative. It really dug its hooks into me at first, but then slowly started to turn them once we got deeper into their history and it turned into a cringefest of epic proportions. As someone who’s dealt with addiction in my past, the way time lapses and James seems to forget or lose time resonated with me in a way few games do; I’ve also had my fair share of toxic relationships, so some of that tugged on my emotions a bit as well, but it quickly devolved into what I can only assume would be someone’s personal history with an ex that lacked closure due to one or both of the participants’ inability to adopt healthy coping mechanisms. Most of the voice acting is going to be coming from these characters, and I really thought James landed his lines, but Draculae made me want to see her die quickly and as violently as possible just based on her word choice and delivery.
I really enjoyed most of the music, which was a constant barrage of EDM mixed with nu-metal rap rock that had some occasional sampling of what sounded like broken machinery, a washing machine with a bowling ball and some glass in it, and other Silent Hill-ish noise that melded into something unsettling and calming at the same time. While some of the rap lyrics were kind of cringe-y and made no sense, I still find myself enjoying it as I leave some Let’s Play videos from YouTube running in the background as I write this just to hear more of it. I honestly would pay real money for the soundtrack of this, since it’s nowhere to be found on Shazaam or my normal streaming platforms. Did I mention James’ VA is the rapper? No? Well, he is, and if he could stop saying he’s a motherfucking demon or something every 10 seconds, he may actually have a legit chance at that if voiceover doesn’t work out.
The gameplay loop is simple and after repeating it so many times, I would say too simple as it becomes repetitious around the halfway point, and the latter half left me just hoping that each level would be the last. Most of the levels will task you with searching through different mazes either saving or killing hostages, finding keys, killing enemies, and then backtracking to an elevator which sends you on to the next level. The formula really doesn’t change much aside from a few boss battles, which are just as uninspired and in my case, broken as all Hell, but we’ll get to that later when I cover all the glitches. The gunplay is fine once you make some adjustments to the sensitivity which by default is set at crackhead speed – I set mine around 30 if you’re struggling with this, but the bullet time mechanic feels slightly wasted and left me playing most of the game without really using it, essentially turning this into more of a successor to the criminally underrated cult classic The Suffering opposed to Mr. Payne’s series. It was a blast to move through corridors and just destroy each enemy as it reared it’s head in a quick and bloody fashion that was the equivalent of video game comfort food.
The first few enemies you’ll face are vampires that look more like pregnant zombies who are constantly holding their stomachs, as well as werewolves that are melee-based and are by default enemies that will just run head first into you at a meth head pace as you blow holes into their heads. Once the ranged attackers come into play the game gets a little more interesting, but by interesting I mean frustrating. These guys are somewhat easy to dispatch in small groups, but after you start getting four or more thrown at you in tandem it becomes an exercise in patience and little else. These guys can teleport around and shoot you with projectiles that take massive amounts of your health away, health that you can only replenish with pills, because that’s how Max did it (So did Torque by the way), but they must have the child safety caps still on because it literally takes you a day to pop it and eat them. As the game came to a close, it became a point for me to remember where they would spawn, picking them off as soon as possible, and hoping that I could get another checkpoint because I literally kept dying in the exact same spot, from the exact same attack over and over again.
The checkpoints are also problematic because some are triggered at the absolute worst of times, missing key areas that it would’ve made more sense to insert them into, occasionally saving your game right before you are about to die. I had to restart entire levels due to this at least a dozen times because when you come back, there aren’t any replenished health bars or reloaded guns, but just you as you were right before you died the last time.
There are some other annoying enemies to be found as well, such as the plague doctor-looking fellow who spawns a never-ending stream of haunted puppets that will float around and swarm you as their creator bobs and bounces around living their best life. There are also a few guys who require you to melee them every so often, however, your melee attack comes in two flavors, a gentle pat like you’re correcting your dog for pissing on the floor and another that is more fatal but requires a stake, and this asshole requires the second option. The problem here is that there are some areas that don’t spawn or have them readily available, resulting in me having to restart another level. Again. Like it’s fucking Groundhog Day.
In addition to the bullet time leap and stake, you have access to dual pistols, a shotgun, an assault rifle, an Uzi, a “launcher” that just looks like a fat pistol, and some Molotovs. These are mostly fine, outside of the shotgun that needs to be thrown in the trash and is useless in any scenario. Reloading is a bit of a chore and is slow across the board, which becomes even more problematic later in the game when ammo seems less available, at least for the guns you prefer, and left me sitting there cycling through the weapons reloading each of them every encounter, taking up more and more time as my death total kept rising. There’s also a dodge ability that doesn’t trigger bullet time, and while you are invincible during the actual roll, getting out of it is a bit slow and leaves you open to attack from the enemies that come in for the close game, a game that you won’t want to play because most of the guns have this weird close range dead zone where the hitboxes don’t register correctly. Just so we’re clear, Mr. Savage’s hitbox is the size of a 1986 Buick and there is no barrier or buffer in place to prevent the enemies from just pounding you into the ground if you make one wrong move at the wrong time.
This is very much a tribute to the early 2000s era of gaming, one of my favorites because in most cases, the finished product actually worked out of the box and if it didn’t, you’re out of luck. Had this game been a little more polished and released in 2001, I could easily see this being something we’d be looking forward to a remaster of instead of the first two Payne games, but released as is, would’ve been the Cyberpunk 2077 long before it was the initial failure it became because the infestation of bugs makes that day one release look perfect. Initially, I was enjoying the retro look and feel, how the constipated look of Sam Lake was replaced by a different protagonist with a squished face that looked like a rotten potato, and how the basic flat assets reminded me of the OG Xbox horror days. I particularly enjoyed one specific level that reminded me of the Ashtray Maze from Control, thanks to the shifting walls and platforms that just kept expanding and throwing waves of enemies at me, however, this was really one of the few that left a positive lasting impression. The settings and assets looked like they were ripped from some of my favorite releases and really left me enjoying this, speaking its praises in private to a few friends as I worked my way through the levels until they started to repeat the same assets and areas for the sixth or more time, making me feel stupid as I rushed to backpedal my statements before they took my word and bought this downright broken game at full price and hearing about it later.
A lot of the issues of the game could’ve easily been remedied by a good editor and solid QA testing because this could’ve easily had a third or more shaved off of its eight-hour run time, with probably almost half of that being due to restarts. Some trimming of the fat would have allowed for essentially the same experience in a smaller package that would’ve avoided the whole repetition pitfall which became even more problematic due to how many times I had to restart checkpoints if not the entire level due to a bug. There are minor ones, such as the framerate dipping to negative four due to the number of assets on the screen or the popping in and out at a pace that would give a young Pokemon viewer the seizure of their life, or how these weird purple pyramids take the place of assets until you get closer to them. Then there are the more impacting ones, all of which halted progress, such as how I spawned without any guns. I was holding something but it wasn’t there, and while I could see my ammo and switch between different versions of nothing, none of my weapons worked at all. During the first boss fight, I had many issues, the first being where he just disappeared midway into the fight and started spawning a never-ending wave of enemies that after 10 minutes or so, I just let them kill me off because I assumed it was yet another glitch (it was), only to respawn in an empty arena with no boss, no minions, just a health bar and me. After restarting and getting to the second phase of the battle, he dashed towards me and then got stuck outside of the map where I could still see him, he could see me, but we couldn’t hit each other. On the next attempt, the same damn thing happened, but at least he was a little closer and I could still melee him through the wall, which was the only saving grace because I was really ready to just throw in the towel here. Additionally, but less noteworthy, there were countless areas where I fell through the map and had a goal object such as a key or hostage soft lock where they were, but I couldn’t rescue or pick the item in question up, or elevator doors that wouldn’t open despite showing it as my objective. I am sure I am missing a few, but you get the point by now.
El Paso, Elsewhere is a game that has a solid foundation that is plagued by so much bloat and glitches that I wouldn’t feel right recommending it in its current state. Unless you really want to experience the narrative and solid soundtrack, there isn’t much to see here after the first 20 or so levels, and it just gets worse from there. If there is a sequel, I want to give an open invitation to the developers to have that same heart-to-heart talk I had with my son for a small nominal fee. Or QA testing, whatever they prefer.
6 out of 10
Pros
- A Unique Catchy Soundtrack
- Solid Voice Work on James Savage’s Part
- An Interesting Narrative
- Early Hours Are Reminiscent of Early 2000s Game Play
Cons
- So Many Bugs I Need to Have an Exterminator Tent My House Afterwards
- Reloading, Rolling, and Healing Take Entirely Too Long
- The Second Half is a Downright Chore
- Wonky Controls
El Paso, Elsewhere was developed and published by Strange Scaffold. It launched on PC, X1, and XSX. The game was provided to us for review on XSX. If you’d like to see more of El Paso, Elsewhere, check out the developer’s site.
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