This is one of those games where I find putting a star rating on it feels... inaccurate? Incomplete. Much like my time with the game I suppose.

I've taught myself not to just power through and finish a game as maybe I would have a decade or more ago. So when my interest started to wane and I looked up how many chapters were left, it didn't help to learn I was only half way through. I pushed ahead a little more but hitting a brick wall of a boss fight, I decided to cut my losses. The gameplay is good, the story is good, and the music is great. Honestly, it's a good game and the people who are good at it will love it. It just is long without justifying that length and odd difficulty spikes on the "intended" settings.

EVERYBODY PUT YOUR HANDS UP
CAUSE THIS ICE CREAM MAN'S GONNA INSTRUCT
EVERYBODY GOOD EVERY DAY'S A FUN DAY
WHEN YOU GOT YOURSELF A
hUmAn SuNdAe

I was really unsure on whether I was liking the game or not. The combat felt fine, but the enemy design was not in line with its mechanics at all. Bullet time is damn near useless because every projectile enemy shoots explosives anyway so dodging those is a hail mary. Everything deals half your health or more so you either pick things off at a distance or circle strafe and get hit by jank collision damage anyway. Despite those issues I was still having fun enough. It felt like a roblox remake of Max Payne but it was still Max Payne and I like those games.
The story is weird. I don't like the protagonist. He's a sadboy drug addict like Max Payne but he's constantly giving reddit quips and talking about how good he is at killing things. Maybe my memory is fuzzy but Max Payne never said "Hell Yeaaaah!" after killing someone that was involved in murdering his entire family.
It was starting to work for me, the further it went. There's a really long cutscene about staying in an abusive relationship despite knowing it was bad for you because of the memory of a good time and it was starting to all come together. There's a cool intro to a boss fight, and then the fight was awful. Just a terrible, poorly thought out fight with telegraphs that are basically nonexistent. It was a fight so bad that it made me look back on the rest of the game and realize that if a game made me ask myself constantly if I was having fun or not, I wasn't having fun.

Also having your main char's VA narrate over the game constantly while the soundtrack is sung by the same VA and the sound effects from the monsters are also the same VA is one of the dumbest moves I think I've ever seen.

This game is literal perfection. The gameplay, inspired by Max Payne, merges everything perfectly. Every weapon has a utility. Every enemy is different enough to change your strategies and try different thing. Every level is a masterpiece. Every song kicks in at the perfect moments to create the perfect combat encounters to create the perfect experience. The story is top-tier and covers topics I haven't seen before in another game. Every single aspect of this game just lands so, so well. The characters, especially Savage, is just... Amazing. The performances are amazing. The writing and humor is amazing. It is scary how amazingly good this game is. I'm going to follow this company closely, because this game left me wanting so, so much more. Everyone should play this game.

El Paso, Elsewhere is a third-person dungeon-crawling shooter featuring a vampire hunter that chased his ex-girlfriend (who happens to be a vampire) into a void. The game's style, story, and characters are the absolute highlights and were able to carry me to the end. A gripping story of love, trauma, and the scars left behind. James as a character was especially great. The snippets of him reflecting in the elevator between levels were a great reward pairing nicely with the rather short in-and-out level design. Watching him slowly grow more restless the longer he spends in the void and seeing him forced to face the trauma of his past was fantastic stuff. The surreal aesthetic that the void conjures works well with the experience. Additionally, the gunplay is fun, with the slow-mo ability and head-shot damage doing a lot of heavy lifting in creating a satisfying loop.
My personal biggest issue with this game is the enemy variety and environments. The enemies that were there were solid, but there just wasn't enough variety for the length of the game. Shooting the same werewolves and shambling vampires gets pretty dull by the end. While I generally enjoyed the level design itself, the environments leaned heavily on reusing assets. While the reuse is explained and justified story-wise, it results in a rather large number of levels being visually indistinguishable from one another. That coupled with a lack of verticality in level design made many levels play out very similarly. Either rescue civilians or find the colored keys to progress. I think both of these issues would have had less impact if the game itself was tightened up in length. As much as I loved the story, the levels just didn't always do it for me and I was forcing myself to finish by the end.

Overall, this was a good time and the game's story and style charmed me. Just need some more variety and a tightened experience.

Frustratingly buggy but nonetheless cool. While the homages it is making are quite obvious, El Paso actually managed to stand on its own two feet fairly well - with a great central character and performance, and a tremendous visual style.

I felt like things were dragging a bit, and then I encountered a progress blocking bug I didn't feel inclined to try and get around, so I'm tapping out about an hour before things wrap up, which is a shame. May come back to this in a few patches time, as it's pretty cool.

This feels like a really loving homage to something the creators hadn't actually played in years (Max Payne, obviously) and just developed off of the memory of it in their heads.

Most elements of the game feel pretty superfluous: the slow-mo is pretty useless because most enemies are melee, meaning you use it to point at enemy's heads and immediately kill them before they become even remotely threatening. That, and the fact most of the monsters go down in a matter of maybe 3 shots to the head with any given weapon, make the combat pretty boring and easy. Legitimately the only times I died are when the levels were designed to have the monsters ambush you around corners where they'd chop off all your health before you could react, and I never ran out of ammo or health pickups. If you want to know specifically how redundant some mechanics are, rolling and diving a specific number of times are some of the rarer achievements for this game on Steam.

Plus, the game just goes on for too long; I was somewhat interested in the story and even liked some of the characters enough to get invested in some conversations early on, but about 2 hours of content could be cut and nothing could be lost. Seriously, there are more scenes where the protagonist is just talking to himself like he's in a soap opera where he's the only character than him interacting with ANYONE ELSE IN THE GAME.

A true spiritual successor to the first two Max Payne games.
It's earnest and sincere, surreal and haunting.
When it's serious and personal you feel the stakes, when it's goofy camp you laugh.
Presentation is mature and impactful, making ample use of lighting, framing and color.
The voice performances and writing deliver a lot with very little, both succinct and purposeful.
The hip-hop pounding guitar blaring soundtrack keeps. you. going. through a 6 hours-ish 50 chapter campaign that goes places.
You can modify the amount of damage you take and how much painkillers heal or turn on infinite ammo and painkillers for maximum fun or challenge, depending on what you want.

It's an easy recommend not only for any fan of Max Payne but any fan of over the top action.

Excelent tribute to Max Payne 1 and 2. Full of personality and style.

That being said, is very direct on what it is so don't expect tons of content fluff.

You go in, you shoot stuff, you see a cutscene, and you repeat that again.

And I appreciate that.

Really wanted to like this one, and there are some parts of it I do like - the broad brush strokes of the narrative, the soundtrack (sans the rapping; lyrics were too cringe for me lol) - but ultimately it felt easy, repetitive, hollow, and boring. Making most of the enemies in a Max Payne homage melee was not a good move, and there's way too many levels. You don't have to slo-mo or dive-dodge basically at all in this game, and in fact will actively hurt you in the boss fights as the roll-dodge is how you get away from the boss tracking. A strong effort for sure, but a weak outcome.

Dripping with Max Payne influence, El Paso, Elsewhere does maybe too good of an homage to that style game.

The constant motion abilities with gunplay and movement are good. It gets a bit dragged down by aiming mechanics that just feel slightly off though. Where the reticle is in relation to the camera placement just feels slightly off, so whenever I was aiming, I found it unnatural and like I was going to miss.

The game is a bit rough around the edges in a few places. Some of this is charming and really works for the style of game its going for. It's not able to overcome all of those rough spots, especially in regards to hit detection and clipping.

I found myself a few times getting stuck on something or getting stuck inside something. These of course would always happen in a wave of enemies, so I'd end up dying or in pretty rough shape when this would occur, making the whole experience a bit frustrating at times. Especially with the more common hit detection issues.

To just finish the bad stuff and get it all out of the way, the game is also way too long. The environments, the gunplay, the weapon and enemy variety, these are all pretty good in El Paso, Elsewhere, but because the game feels like it drags, some of these good factors get less impressive as the game goes on. Especially once the game stop introducing new enemies, new weapons and new environments.

There are good to great things with this game too. The music is fantastic, the weapon variety is nice, the enemy variety is as well, and the story is pretty good on top of it. The voiceover of our main character is also done very well.

El Paso, Elsewhere does a great job standing apart from its inspiration while feeling so similar to that Max Payne style gunplay and vibe. Some of the design choices from those games probably should've been left to that era. Minor frustrations and bigger ones drag the overall creative and interesting experience down which is a shame but this is a game worth trying if Max Payne style mechanics is something you enjoy. The story, the music, and overall experience should be enough to push through some of the issues.

On its surface, a bald-faced Max Payne homage with little to offer iteratively. El Paso, Elsewhere is, however, much more than just a Max Payne homage, but a love letter to all of Remedy’s games.

“Love letter” is not my ideal turn of phrase here. I’ve heard so many reviewers toss around “love letter” that it makes my stomach churn. Love letter this, spiritual successor that; “is every boomer shooter a love letter to Quake?” I hear you ask. Maybe every first person shooter is a love letter to Quake, my friend…

You can dive and shoot enemies in slow-motion, therefore it’s a Max Payne-like title – this isn’t the first Max Payne-like, but certainly the most publicized one in a long while. El Paso, Elsewhere had already piqued my interest long before its release, so you can imagine how excited I was after playing through Max Payne (twice) and Max Payne 2 (twice) and realized that another Max Payne – a surreal, supernatural Max Payne – was about to explode onto the indie scene.

And then, it came out, and it started making Top 10s. Like, Game of the Year Top 10s. Seriously? It’s that good?!

El Paso, Nightmare would temper my expectations going in. From a holistic perspective, Nightmare’s greatest success (as an unsavory “appetizer,”) is that Elsewhere appears much more stylish, more refined, and much more bold in comparison.

Hot off the heels of the original Max Payne titles, the greatest compliment I can give Elsewhere is that it’s nothing if not a faithful recreation of the archetype. It is a smidge floatier, although I’d argue this elevates the experience if anything.

Additionally, although it only appears to imitate Max Payne at a glance, Remedy superfans will notice the many flourishes of El Paso, Elsewhere which have roots beyond the immediately obvious.

There’s a dream sequence in Max Payne 2 where the ceiling vanishes, revealing a bloodred canopy sky; naturally, the ceiling also appears to have vanished in El Paso, Elsewhere, allowing players to peer into the undulating void beyond. This works on two levels: first as a stylistic choice inherited from the Max Payne series, and also mechanically, as our overhead view is no longer obstructed by low ceilings, allowing a wider perspective and letting environments feel a lot less claustrophobic overall.

There’s also some more obvious garnishes: the Pill Cop radio shows, the pistols akimbo, the big ol' title cards for each chapter. I drew parallels between the Force Beyond and Thomas Zane in the original Alan Wake, and the Void’s geometry containing elements of the Oldest House from Control.

Remedy games have a lot of character thanks to Sam Lake’s textural metanarratives and thematic undertones, although what El Paso, Elsewhere lacks in Remedy’s two decades worth of interconnected storytelling, it makes up for with Xalavier Nelson Jr.’s triple threat powerhouse performance as game director, singer-songwriter, and vocal talent of protagonist James Savage.

I won’t lie though, for every needle drop that works, there’s at least one other needle drop that doesn’t. Human Sundae is a little too goofy for the grotesque viscerafest it’s describing, and At the End just doesn’t gel with the otherworldly visuals of the level it’s built for.

That’s not to say there aren’t some prime cuts here: In the Hole, Break Shit, Blood Pressure, and Monster Club are all noisy, chaotic tracks that perfectly compliment their respective chapters. My favorite track is Interview 38. I love how it starts like an audio log and slowly morphs into I see that it’s inside you I see that it’s inside you I see that it’s inside you I see that it’s inside you

However, Xalavier Nelson Jr.’s performance as James Savage always hits the mark. A medley of grim, surly, wry, analytical, and insecure – a character as fun and interesting as any Max Payne could be.

El Paso, Elsewhere’s biggest downfall – and I’m sorry that I’ve waited until now to reveal this – is that it’s simply not built with bullet time in mind.

I’ve said this previously about Max Payne 3. That game is steadfastly a cover shooter first and a Max Payne sequel second. El Paso, Elsewhere is more like an arena shooter first and a Max Payne-like second. Most of El Paso, Elsewhere could work as a first person shooter without bullet time, and that’s a problem.

The bullet time doesn’t just feel superfluous, it is superfluous. Closer to Max Payne 2 in terms of overpowered, but in the sense that the game was not meant for it. This issue is exacerbated by the enemies, which do not engage players in such a way to reinforce the game’s central mechanics – they don’t necessitate bullet time, but it does make them significantly easier to kill.

There’s the rub, really. Enemies like the mummified vampires or leaping werewolves could’ve worked in the context of an arena shooter. In a Max Payne-like, though? What’s the point? Some enemies shoot projectiles but they’re so easy to dodge, and bullet time only trivializes these projectiles further.

Minor spoilers, but there’s two main “boss fights,” and the first one was really good. I died a few times trying to learn the tells, but once I did, I was like, whoa! This is sick. I was rolling out of enemy attacks like I was playing Dark Souls and going Max Payne mode and it was awesome.

The second (and final) boss? Basically the same boss, but way more jank for some reason. Their character model kept getting stuck in the floor I think. Also their second phase is just their first phase but faster maybe? I don’t know. Didn’t really leave an impression on me. A little sad it never really evolved beyond “roll out of an enemy’s attack”. I also didn’t use bullet time for the final boss at all.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that, yeah, nothing in this game feels like it was made for bullet time. The levels are mostly flat with very little verticality. The enemies are mostly close-range, or can be killed safely at a distance.

It’s still fun though haha. Bullet time blasting vampires and werewolves doesn’t get old. I guess you can retrofit bullet time onto anything and it’s automatically better unless you’re Max Payne 3!

This won’t be on my GOTY list but it’s still fun and you have to support indie devs otherwise I get you

Embodying the noir-ish surreality introduced so intriguingly in the Max Payne games of the 2000s, El Paso, Elsewhere leans further into the fantastical as you take control of James Savage, a man essentially on a death drive to try and stop his ex-girlfriend from obliterating humanity - she is a vampire, by the way.

While it's narrative is rich in complexity, fueled by the straining toxicity of the two former lovers as they navigate their own identities, the game design is a bit simpler. It's less focused on a gradual development of environments as you descend into the dimensionless void since the they repeat, remix with each other, and altogether reflect a cyclical trajectory of angst, sorrow, and longing. It makes sense, but one of the many issues with this game is in its repetition in its world building. It's almost more similar to a game like Robotron - the same level over and over but populated by more and more enemies - than Max Payne.

The gameplay, at its core, is fun - its action aggressive, tinged with traces of survival and psychological horror. Fighting your way through armies of vampires, werewolves, and other creatures provides a rush in part because of its Max Payne-influenced bullet time. However, I wasn't expecting it to be predictably linear, the intractability with the world and the enemy variants limited. It feels that the amplified melodrama of not just the story and its narration but in the aesthetics (the big, bold names of the levels as you start, for instance) provide a veneer to a design that could have been a bit more ambitious, matching its narrative musculature.

And that narration is delightfully discomforting. Savage, voiced by the game's creative lead Xalavier Nelson Jr., reeks of an elusive regret, coaxed by a decomposing sense of self-worth. Paralleling the dizzying world also falling apart, it's almost as if the narration describes a deep dive into Savage's own soul. Even if the arch-nemesis is trying to destroy humanity, it's still someone he used to love. Compounded with the cinematic flair of cut scenes and other stylistic sensibilities, El Paso holds itself together firmly with tonal viciousness. You continue through this adventure no matter your inclination towards its repetition because there is a confidence brimming from the developers that this story is worth exploring. And it is.

There’s a lot to like about this vampire-filled take on Max Payne. I thought it did a good job of nailing the self-important inner monologue of the main character, slow motion is always fun and the weapons, while few in number, generally have a decent punch. It doesn’t quite get there though; the biggest issue is probably the enemies themselves as most of them are melee types that just dumbly rush towards you. It’s also too long for the lack of level variety. It took me a little under 10 hours to get through all the levels but I think it could have stood to be more like 5-6.

The gameplay is clearly doing its best Max Payne impression, with the problem that all of the enemies in the first hour are melee enemies. So in each fight, in each arena, in each level, you're backpedaling as the throngs of undead accumulate into single-file globs that open themselves up to pop-pop-pops, rinse and repeat.

The slow-mo feels superfluous - it was WAY more impactful in Max Payne because the speed of the action was way higher. You really needed to utilize the slow-mo there, because a room with 5 dudes in it was a problem. A room with 5 gun-toting thugs is a room with 5 immediate threats, as soon as you enter the room. Having all of the enemies be melee means that they're not threats as much as they are moving targets, eagerly lining up to be plinked off. I've scanned ahead in some YouTube playthroughs and see that they do introduce a ranged enemy later on, but it doesn't look like it's going to fix my issue.

The music is kind of a bummer to me, because I really like all of the instrumental stuff, but as soon as one of the lyrics-laden tracks spins up, I kina physically recoil. I'm glad that the dev is having fun and putting their music out there. I just really don't think it's good, earnestly or ironically.

Scrubbing through the full-game playthrough on YouTube, I think it's EXTREMELY unlikely that I'm going to give this game 7 hours to playthrough. That is a genuinely staggering runtime to me, and it seems like it'd be such a better game if it was half that length and foregrounded the story first and foremost