El Paso, Elsewhere Reviews

The story, the dialogue, and the gameplay all mesh together in a wonderful collaboration. I was hooked from the beginning to the end. A tragic and beautiful game. 10/10

nice game with good mechanics but fantastic story, i WOULD HAVE PREFERED IT TO BE A LITTLE SHORTER BUT i AM GLAD i FINISHED IT AND ENJOYED IT

ok yeah this was absolutely amazing the whole thing everything from writing to game play was fantastic cant rec this enough if you enjoy games like max payne, i love pill head protags they just like me fr

El Paso, Elsewhere From the steam page, “STAKES. GUNS. SLOW-MO. Fight werewolves and vampires in a reality-shifting motel. Dive through barricades to escape the grasp of evil puppets. Destroy the villain you loved. A new, third-person love letter to classic shooters. Neo-noir never looked so good.” World’s worst break up. Ever. So this game was a mixed bag for me. The gunplay, the gameplay, the mechanics, were all enjoyable and fun. The story was okay, but the acting was… melodramatic, like we’re talking CW levels here. This was the same studio that brought us I Am Your Beast, which I played earlier this year. The same voice actor was the protagonist in that game as well, and his sort of low grumble delivery was better in that game, I feel, than here. The game was going for a sort of neo-noir vibe, but I don’t feel like it nailed it, and the story struggled to pull me in. I just kind of didn’t really care about the story all that much. I think part of it was how it was delivered, and also that the graphical style they went with just didn’t vibe well with the sort of drama they were going for. I think they would’ve benefited greatly by doing drawn comic style cut scenes instead, which would’ve given way more emotive responses from our protagonist as well as the antagonist. The gameplay itself was definitely the bright point for the game, and the reason to give it a go. This feels like the closest thing to a Max Payne game I’ve ever played - that wasn’t Max Payne. Sure many have done the bullet time thing since then, but this had all the elements. The protagonist was wearing a flowy jacket, the camera angle, the stiff animations, the painkillers to heal, the neo-noir-ish vibes, it’s all kind of here. The game was decently tough, or super easy, depending. I’d have moments where I’d get killed, as it was very easy to get killed, but would reload and since I now knew where an enemy would spawn, I’d walk through it. The game definitely liked to drop enemies right on top of you, or have them hiding behind corners. There was a decent variety of weapons in the game, I believe 7 in total. Not a crazy amount, but enough variety that it felt appropriate to switch between different weapons for different enemies. Almost like that of a boomer shooter. Health and ammo were something you had to be conscientious of as well. So you’d switch to weapons with more ammo to save up extra for the low ones. Though by the end I was pretty much swamped with ammo, and rarely even used some guns because I had so much. The graphics style they went with was okay, but even Max Payne is prettier in comparison. It felt like a mix between Valheim and PS1 era graphics, but with decent volumetric and lighting effects that you wouldn’t have seen in that era. In my opinion, it's just a little too ugly for my liking, and slightly void of having enough charm to be enjoyable to look at. During gameplay I didn’t mind the graphics at all, but during the cut scenes. Man. Again, they would have benefited from some other way to do those. I did appreciate the good lighting system when they gave the rare dark levels - these levels had much more atmosphere and mood to them, bordering on creepy. I honestly think the game would have benefited from having more dark levels and being a little more creepy. You are fighting vampires and werewolves after all. The music here was… a choice. I was alright with it, kind of digging it at first. It went off the rails though as the game kept on. The original songs were, fine, I guess. The OST just got incredibly annoying for me after awhile though and I had to turn the music to like 35% volume because it was just too constant, too loud, and too annoying. I’m sure others might like it more than I did, but for me it was a big negative. Overall, El Paso, Elsewhere, is a fun retro style shooter that nailed the feeling of the Max Payne games, while introducing some interesting gameplay mechanics and modern improvements. I enjoyed the combat quite a bit. Come for the combat, take the story for what it is, and whatever you do don’t take it as seriously as the voice actors did. 7.5/10

Good game, but is has up and down. 👍 Very abstract, it give Postal vibe and the shooting was good. 👎 While I did enjoy the context without spoiling it, many unnecessary levels could have been cut off and bosses that spiked the difficulty for no reason. The story might upset you as it gave me the vibe of a millennial writer. At some point, I've even just stopped caring about those extra story dialogue as it is all about watching a couple giggling together and you're the third wheel friend forced to listen because you're driving for them.

Game is very good when you boost the custom difficulty a bit more. Then it become Hotline Miami with slowdown.

This would have been a brilliant ode to Max Payne, if not for the fact that the game is buried beneath a masterclass of cringe from the game director Xalavier Nelson Jr. Almost every part of what he noticeably had a hand in from the voice acting, to the terrible rapping over what is an otherwise great soundtrack, made my eyes nearly roll out of my head every thirty seconds. Almost no part of the story is compelling, the romance being hands down one of the most vomit-inducing love stories ever written, with how uninteresting it is. Overall, this was fun to play, but much too long, and with the absolute cringefest of a story and creative performances, can’t be recommended.

Other than the fact that this is a Max Payne-like where doing the Max Payne bullet time dive isn't worth it, this is very good. The combat is snappy, but the real stars are the story, soundtrack and surreal presentation. A game about killing a vampire to stop an apocalypse ends up being an extremely personal tale about an abusive relationship, addiction, and what it means to be a good person. Recommended.

This was top notch. Really well done. I found no flaws with it at all. If you think its too much like Max Payne you are wrong, that had two uzis and this only has one.

Better to approach in pieces, the game way overstays its welcome. 50 chapters is a lot for a game that is essentially a Max Payne clone with a more abrupt gameplay loop.