El Paso, Elsewhere feels just like the cancelled shooter PS2 adaptation of an extremely short-lived Picture Comics horror collection from the mid-90s, leaked by a disgruntled developer over Google Drive greater than a decade after the actual fact. It’s one thing that will have had a six episode animated collection, broadcast out of order at 1am. It’s a testomony to that second in popular culture the place the good factor conceivable was a tortured man in a trenchcoat, holding a gun in every hand and preventing monsters. Whether or not you regard this aesthetic with respect or disgust will assist you to decide whether or not there’s something right here for you.
In case you have the requisite style, El Paso, Elsewhere will occupy your head in a means nothing else has managed for a very long time. James Savage is a person with a trenchcoat, an issue with drug habit and a good larger downside together with his ex-girlfriend. She’s actually the precise Dracula, and he or she’s triggered an arcane ritual to finish the world in a motel in James’ dusty hometown. James has additionally received a behavior for self-narration, simply one of many many issues he’s picked up from the late, nice Max Payne. James restores his well being by quaffing painkillers and his most well-liked technique of coping with hazard is to dive in sluggish movement and shoot it within the head.
Whereas Rockstar deserted the pulp trappings and surrealism of the collection so as to add one other leaden Michael Mann pastiche to their library, Elsewhere imagines a contemporary Max Payne with all of these components dialled up. Whereas all of Max Payne’s wildest ranges had been dream sequences or drug journeys, right here, the descent into the motel’s non-euclidean bowels are very literal. When James faces his demons, they’re precise demons. And werewolves, thralls, ghouls, teleporting zombie brides and fits of armour full of offended meat. And a biblically correct angel.
You cope with this increasing supernatural menagerie with what appears like by no means fairly sufficient bullets. You be taught in a short time that treating this like a mean third-person shooter will see you swarmed and diced earlier than you possibly can blink. Sustaining your manner whilst you have a dozen werewolves scrambling via the fog in direction of you isn’t an impulse you’re going to be taught with out dealing with a couple of encouraging recreation over screens. Creating the data to softly sidestep them as they dive on your throat, pop the airborne lycanthrope in its furry bonce with a single spherical and watch its slow-motion corpse ragdoll right into a pile of furnishings behind you is a very efficient mechanical hook.
Not that it’s the one facet of the fight. Whereas the bread and butter is all the time going to be slow-motion dives, it’s incessantly extra satisfyingly economical to take out a intently gathered group of lumbering thralls with a single stake salvaged from splintered furnishings than it’s to waste lead. A defensive roll might sound pointless within the opening hours, however because the trickle of recent enemies and their accompanying projectiles and melee ranges will increase, it begins to make excellent sense.
A lot of this recreation’s chaos finally ends up making a bizarre type of intuitive sense. You grow to be an skilled within the traps the motel has ready for you. You be taught to all the time count on a werewolf in a rest room stall. The motel is handled prefer it’s alive, with James talking to it like a worthy adversary, questioning aloud if it has a deliberate sense of humour because it performs with time and area with reckless abandon.
As you delve deeper into the void, actuality bends and leaks to an ever worsening diploma. Issues begin merely sufficient, together with your common infinite corridors and lacking ceilings, however the motel quickly begins to grow to be infested with locations and objects from James’ and Draculae’s previous. Whereas initially contained to separate ranges, ultimately all the pieces begins to bleed collectively. Loos result in graveyards which result in historic castles full of workplace gear. A single nook can lead you from someplace acquainted to a burning nineteenth century English manor.
Scattered all through the cosmic mess are radio advertisements from the surface world and projectors. Snippets from previous conversations between James and Draculae give a glimpse into their previous, serving to you piece collectively what turned her from a cool goth girlfriend who likes to speak about whether or not or not Transformers have intercourse to a full-blown creature of darkness on the verge of ending the world. These are all the time grounded and intimate in a means that heightens the sense of simply how damaged and tragic all the pieces has grow to be. Discovering a tape of Draculae asking her boyfriend if he would nonetheless love her if she was a worm, you possibly can’t assist however wish to push downward, to learn the way all of it went this unsuitable.
Each facet of El Paso, Elsewhere is one thing that may very well be interpreted as a disparate mess, if not for the truth that all of it comes collectively fully flawlessly. The soundtrack is a superbly calibrated mixture of chill beats to traverse the void to, and assaults of thumping, migraine bass and shouted lyrics. The sport shifts into one thing actually transcendental in these moments the place you could find the resolve to ship calm and managed violence whilst you’re surrounded by quickly advancing waves of claws and enamel, because the mantra BREAK SHIT KILL PEOPLE BREAK SHIT blares in your headphones. When you let it, it might lead you into the type of bizarrely meditative, hyper violent trance that Hotline Miami managed, the place all the pieces slows down and you end up capable of parse the aural and visible noise to dispatch foes with mathematical precision.
As James will get nearer to his vacation spot, he accepts it as a a technique journey. His morose sense of obligation begins to slide away, and he finds himself liberated. He begins having fun with the catharsis and doom of all of it. When you get your self equally attuned to its generally abrasive nature, you’ll discover that El Paso, Elsewhere turns right into a surprisingly unhappy and candy odyssey, borrowing closely from related works however finally creating one thing deeply distinctive. A cosmic third-person shooter from a forgotten age that may make you dwell in your worst break-up.
This evaluation was primarily based on a replica supplied by the developer Unusual Scaffold. Unusual Scaffold’s Artistic Director is Xalavier Nelson Jr., who has written for RPS.
