![]() The beacons of light that shoot up from each objective also mean it’s nearly impossible to get lost, as most levels lack roofs.Įl Paso, Elsewhere’s gameplay makes me feel like a badass as I dive into a room and take out multiple enemies at once, but James is pretty frail and ammo is scarce, so the tide can quickly turn against him. It’s rare to be ambushed and quickly killed by an enemy like it sometimes is in those older Max Payne games. Ranged attacks are relatively slow and only come from a couple of enemies. El Paso, Elsewhere is a style of third-person shooter that hasn’t been made in a while, but it does find small ways to update the gameplay to make it more enjoyable. From pistols to shotguns to Uzis, plethora features a plethora of weapons that can quickly shred apart enemies at their disposal as they drive around and even slow down time to pull off perfect shots. It’s immediately noticeable at first glance that El Paso, Elsewhere is greatly inspired by Remedy Entertainment’s older Max Payne games. Typically, these levels have players blasting through enemies as they save hostages and sometimes fight a powerful boss. James’ captivating descent toward Draculae is split into levels that start out looking like motel rooms and hallways but get increasingly weirder. It kept me playing through the end and all of El Paso’s ups and downs. These struggles are highlighted, but there’s also an undercurrent of hope and encouragement through small things like the death message being “you keep going” instead of “you died.” Indie games that deal with complex emotional topics aren’t new, but El Paso, Elsewhere tells its story in a way that’s somehow both fantastical and humanistic. voices James and breaks the fourth wall often, so a lot of the time, the developer is speaking directly to the player. ![]() It’s an emotional story that’s hard to put down but shows how personal this tale is to its developer. It’s trippy, mind-bending, and sometimes nonsensical, but that all puts me in the mindscape of James in his excruciating journey. Levels will shift form as James makes his way through them, and sometimes, cutscenes that are supposed to take place on an elevator between levels will instead take the form of a motel room or desert. ![]() Objects are recognizable but also blurry and untextured. It’s here where the low-poly aesthetics shine. The further James descends into the 50 floors beneath the supernatural El Paso motel the game takes place in, the more unhinged the experience gets. His relationship with Draculae seems sweet, though tragic, at first, only for it to become clear that it was a destructive and abusive relationship built around chasing a calming sense of love that had long since dissipated. I learned more about how James had abused drugs in the past, something I, as the player, had to force him to relapse on whenever I healed during my journey. The further James descends, the more the layers of his relationship and history with Draculae are pulled back. It’s an emotional story that’s hard to put down …Įl Paso, Elsewhere is a story about vampirism in more ways than one. But, like the Max Payne games, the personal struggles of its main character ground a story that you’ll want to see all the way through, despite the game’s rugged visual style. ![]() Many of the older games El Paso, Elsewhere shares its aesthetic with might not have gone much further than that with the premise. The initial premise of El Paso, Elsewhere is simple enough: James Savage is a monster hunter, his ex-girlfriend Draculae is a vampire, and he has to kill her to stop a cataclysmic event. Clearly a very personal project from Strange Scaffold’s Xalavier Nelson Jr., the rough edges of El Paso, Elsewhere are what make it a beautiful, must-play indie. What starts as a supernatural, neo-noir tribute to genre greats like Max Payne and Blade morphs over time into an intimate story about abuse. Still, El Paso, Elsewhere‘s early 2000s aesthetics are crucial to maintaining the oddball shooter’s otherworldly feeling as players descend further into its main character’s literal and personal hell. That’s not to say it’s a perfect experience sometimes, all that purposeful jank does get in the way of a stylish shootout. The more I played, the more I came to accept that these choices weren’t just intentional, but the very heart of the project. It also plays just like Max Payne and other early third-person shooters, rather than the more refined games in the genre from recent years like Outriders. For a game with such a strong narrative focus, it felt weird for cutscenes to play out in a low-polygon style where the characters wouldn’t emote or move much.
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