LogFAQs > #977565406

El Paso, Elsewhere (PC)

I've never seen anyone talk about this game. It came out September this year and that's it. But it's overwhelmingly positive and given a higher score than your standard fare indie game affair.

It's Max Payne 1 and 2. The UI, the controls, the mechanics, the bullet time, even the weapons and physics and how they operate are similar. If you ever wanted more of the oldschool Max Payne well here is 50 levels of that. It even has a dude monologuing noir style and his voice is amazing it totally sets the mood. I could listen to this guy all day long. It also takes a page from Painkiller in that you are fighting monsters of all kinds including Old Testament angels.

Off the bat, I like how just like in TUNIC there are options to give you invincibility or adjust the amount of pain your receive or dish out. There's even a "story" setting that's equally casual. Ahh the story. Well it's a basic plot: You're trying to stop your ex from ending the world. Just so happens she's the queen of all vampires. The location you're in is kind of a mind fuck place so you traverse through strange locales as the architecture fucks with you. So yeah this game's got a little bit of Alan Wake and Control to it as well.

This game has some really dark themes. Spoilers ahead as you continue descending it becomes really obvious that this relationship was abusive. That the abuse forced you to become addicted to painkillers (explaining the healing mechanic---I just like that it is exactly painkillers like in Max Payne but given context this time). James goes through an entire arc being down here as the location messes with him psychologically but also as he messes with himself in his tireless monologues.

How you think 50 levels is too long totally depends on you. I didn't think it was padding at all; all the cutscenes matter. However, I will say the pacing kind of peters out right around 2/3rds into it when a big thing happens but I thought it was justified. Spoiler: So as you go deeper you find out that the eldritch location messing with you has sentience and has sent something to torment you. You spend a significant amount of time dealing with it and immediately after, you finally see your ex as you approach the lower layers of the game. But in a surprising reveal, she actually lets you go early and it is in fact you who has been agonizing yourself on the kind of person she might or could be or would've been. So I feel like the padding was justified in that it's just you suffering the effects of the manipulation and agonizing yourself on whether she's still there or if you're actually gonna do it and kill her. And I think that's great storytelling.

Best of all, both endings are neither good nor bad. They are simply reprises of the same conclusion, leaving it up to you to decide how it ends and leaves this profound thought on the themes of abuse and control. I don't get though the trigger behind those 2 endings but I guess they had to find a way to make it and that was the only controllable element.

Like Max Payne, there are a lot of sidestuff to collect and see such as the radio and projector items that tell side stories with similar themes. It's not as hidden and intuitive but the things you find are odd in itself to stick around listening to. But also like Max Payne, the game's levels wasn't made with cover in mind so you are encouraged to perform bullet time to solve some tough problems. This antiquated design is both a good and bad thing as that means you are attributed more abstract levels of design which could get boring as you go. All the enemies have headshots and are still just as dangerous down to the common ghoul so weapon control is extremely important so you don't get mobbed. Speaking of the weapons they are great. The switching is almost seamless, the reloading is a bitch though so you have to make shots count and every single one save for the rifle has a punch to it moreso in bullet time. I think my favorite part is seeing smoke from recently fired barrels. It's a nice touch.

Let's see what else. The OST is fantastic. There's 50 levels right? Every single level has its own track and there's no underlying theme; it ranges from hip hop and rap to synth to rock. And the rapper I think is the same as the voice actor so that's amazing. The game also acknowledges setting tone and mood as the music dips in and out seamlessly during sequences in the levels.

Finally some quick bad stuff. The framerate for some reason goes down significantly in some levels and for others, only trigger after performing bullet time so you might be discouraged to use it. Fortunately this has only happened to me twice I think. I've also only encountered one instance in which a checkpoint screwed me over, but that was my attempt to rush a level. There are only 2 bosses spread across 50 levels so unless you're not really into this you might get bored real fast especially in the last 10 levels or so. There's also only 5 "biomes" to see and strangely one of them is in outer space and it only happens in exactly 1 level. Wasted potential I say.

But yeah, go check this game out if you want to get your oldschool Max Payne fix.