This game was always on my radar since I tend to enjoy shooters with bullet time, some more than others but I generally have good fun with these kinds of games. I heard of El Paso, Everywhere back when it was on Game Pass and wasn't on Playstation and my PC couldn't run the game, but I randomly saw a PS5 version a few months ago and decided to finally play it since it's on a system I can play on now.
As a whole I'd say I enjoyed my time with El Paso, Everywhere but a big issue I had with is how long it is.
If Max Payne and a movie like say From Dusk Til Dawn had a baby, you'd get El Paso, Everywhere. You esstentially have the bullet time, painkillers, stoic protagonist, trench coat, intentionally low budget character models and the feel that a small team with a low budget made the game like Max Payne mixed in with the horror elements of From Till Dawn.
It makes for a game that while feeling familar does a good job at feeling different in it's own right. It even has somewhat similar development upbringings like MP does where the director of the game provides the voice for the main character and even the music too.
The story is a rather wild one and the best part is that it never overly gets in the way of gameplay much like it's inspiration Max Payne, cutscenes are brief and gets the story beats across and additional information is revealed through things like additional projectors you can find to flesh out the backstory between Savage and Draculae.
Right off the bat, El Paso, Everywhere makes a good first impression. The tutorial is generally short and brief gets the basic mechanics of the game across like stakes, bullet time, painkillers, shoot dodge, weapon selection and rolling. Only issue I had that being able to auto reload guns after the magazine was empty and pressing fire to reload it has to be turned on in the options menu.
The checkpoint system is very forgiving and the difficulty is completely customizable which are huge points for the game's favor.
Weapons feel nice and punchy and slowly throughout the first half of the game you get introduced to new weapons and enemies. You get dual pistols, then a shotgun, after a tommy gun, then an uzi and a rifle. Mowing down enemies with these guns feels very good to do, and all the way to the first boss of the game, I was having a solid fun time. New enemies would slowly get introduced too, first there would be husks, then wolves, then teleporting monsters who fire projectiles that do a lot of damage to you but can be taken out very quickly, then knights, then puppet monsters that spawn more enemies, then more flying monsters with projectiles with large splash damage then frankensteins that need to be shot at then staked.
The first half of the game does a good job at keeping thing varied and fun in spite of the constant asset reuse for levels. However some negatives is that the shotgun in conjuction to bullet time felt awful to use since the pump time inbetween shots would take too long to fire again while in bullet time. Sure, you could argue that there is a timing involved inbetween pump times and bullet time uses but machine guns and the rifle do a better job at being effective weapons while in bullet time since machine guns can be continously fired and rifle shots don't nearly as long to be shot again compared to the shotgun.
Another issue is that I never got much use out of shoot dodge since the camera would always act weird and jittery making it hard to see my targets, I felt MP1's shoot dodge felt better to use since Max's positioning with the camera felt more clear and he didn't spend nearly as long of a time in the air while in shoot dodge. As a result, I used the manual bullet time in El Paso more than the shoot dodge, I got more use out of the roll ability since the are also more helpful against bosses.
Speaking of bosses, there only two, are massive difficulty spikes and are awful. The roll while better than shoot dodge to avoid boss attacks don't grant invincibility frames when used so it's often a 50-50 guessing game if the boss' sword swings will land on James making what should be breaking up the pace, utterly rage inducing fights due to the issue I mentioned.
The biggest issue with the game is that it's way too long. It's strange, the game is seemingly 8 hours but the thing with games like Max Payne and FEAR is that they are 4 hours according to Youtube longplays but dying and getting lost just makes them 8 hours. El Paso Everywhere is 8 hours but add dying and not knowing where to go might make it 14-16 hours.
On top of this, the game stops introducing new enemies and just shoves in more of them, the asset reuses for levels becomes more obvious and the only new weapons you get is a grenade launcher and that it means you will be doing much of the same stuff in the first hours but now do it again for 5 more. You can argue all this is intentional since James is losing his mind along with the player but intentional or not, I still think it gets tedious and I wish the game would end.
Overall, the game is good but wished if 8 levels were removed, I would enjoy the game much more.
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