El Paso, Elsewhere Review

El Paso, Elsewhere is a supernatural neo-noir third-person shooter where players will go head-to-head with various supernatural creatures such as werewolves and fallen angels all set within a a reality-shifting motel to take on Draculae.

El Paso, Elsewhere is a third person action shooter where players can shoot, jump, roll, dive and slow down time to take care of the waves of supernatural enemies that will attempt to stop you in your mission. In order to complete most levels, you’ll need to find and rescue hostage on each floor of the mythical hotel. There are some levels where you’ll be required to simply hunt down the elevator to progress forward.

Given the hotel is missing its roof, as you roam around the establishment, you’ll see beams of light to indicate the location of the hostages in order to save them. You can’t progress to the next level until you save (or kill) them all. Once you do, the level color changes to fire red/orange and you can simply follow the green exit signs to reach the elevator. Enemies will also come out the woodwork to kill you before you reach the exit.

While you start off with a basic dual pistols, you’ll pick up additional firepower throughout your mission such as a nifty shotgun, uzi and cocktail molotovs for example. One interesting mechanic are the stakes which can be used as melee weapons to kill enemies. You can pick additional stakes by breaking wooden items like chairs or drawers. If you’re out of stakes and melee enemies, it’ll simply push them back.

The game looks great overall. Unique old school aesthetics mixed with a variety of darker color palette creating the game’s unique atmosphere matching the premise. Thankfully, while the gameplay is incredibly repetitive, level variety is surprisingly decent. The soundtrack on the other hand is a mix bag. There’s some rock, rap/hip-hop, electro/techno music. While as a music lover, I appreciate the variety, most of the songs are insufferable and sound like someone dropped a keyboard down a set of stairs. Feel free to sample it yourself: Part 1 and Part 2. There were also cases where the soundtrack was dumbed down by white noise static that I was worried would bust my TV’s speakers. The voiceovers are fine, well delivered giving the game a bit of extra life.

The game does have a handful of annoying issues. The first being the lack of auto-reloading meaning that unlike a lot of games when pressing the trigger to shoot when out of bullets, the protagonist automatically reloads, it’s not the case here, so you need to keep a close eye on your bullet count so you’re not left vulnerable to enemy attacks. The game is also quite repetitive and given this repetitive nature, it feels way too long. At one point during my playthrough, my App counter said 4 hours, but it felt like 70.

Another issue is the overall cheapness of the game. More often than not, you’ll be blindsided by enemies either because when going through a door an enemy is already about to jump you or some cases you’ll look into a direction, turn around and then all of the sudden, you’ll get attacked from behind. The Damned Bride enemies are the most infuriating one. They can zoom across the area and their large electric ball attacks does massive damage; if you get it twice, 3/4 of your health is done.

El Paso, Elsewhere is basically an homage to the classic Max Payne games from way back when but with supernatural aspects instead of human goons. The gameplay, visuals are clearly inspired from the classic shooters. Unfortunately, it’s a nice concept poorly executed. Cheap attacks, repetitive nature, feels like it drags on forever, this make for a tedious experience. If you play it in short bursts, this is tolerable as it’s not the type of game you try and complete in one sitting, otherwise, the longer you play, the more you’ll hate it.