Evil West - Steam Deck Review

A dark menace has consumed the Old West and now it is up to you to eradicate the vampires plaguing the land. Evil West is a third-person shooter where, armed with your lightning fueled gauntlet, you will battle hoards of bloodthirsty foes in stylish and gory combat. With upgradable weapons, perks, and tools, you will fight across the narrative-driven campaign alone or with a friend to save America.

Before I get into the pitfalls of the game's performance, I want to make a special mention to how well the game is optimized. Not only is FSR included in the game, and it looks like FSR 2.0, there are a plethora of graphical options to help increase performance. Flying Wild Hog should be very proud of the way this game is performing as I was able to hit 45 and 50 FPS very comfortably without battery draining over 17W and Evil West still looking gorgeous.

Evil West defaults to medium settings, which I would say is a good starting point so far. Near max settings will probably work for 30 FPS, but I think the game shines when smoother. From there, turning shadows down and AMD FSR on to Ultra Quality allows 45 FPS to shine and hover around an average of 13W - 15W. This can spike up to around 18W during larger fights, so I set a TDP of 11 to accommodate.

The one and only problem, which is the only reason why this game isn't a 5/5, is stuttering. Evil West is built on UE4, which can have some stuttering problems that spawn from asset loading. No matter what settings I changed, it has never gone completely away. Turning view distance down to "near" helps a good bit, but it is still there. The stuttering is worse in combat, but doesn't last long and can go away relatively quick. It will be worse in boss battles.

I still rate Evil West highly though since it didn't hamper my enjoyment of the game itself. I am still enjoying and having a great time, so while it can be a problem and will put some people off, I believe this can be looked past and the game can be enjoyed. I have not tested the entire game yet though, so it could get worse further in, but I would still say Evil West will be an enjoyable time on the Steam Deck.

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Our review is based on the PC version of this game.

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