The Evil Within Playing.
So, let me start by saying I love survival horror, I consider Resident evil 1-4 and Silent Hill 1 - 3 to be genuinely great, scary and enjoyable experiences. I say this just to let you know I was really, really looking forward to The Evil Within, the creator, Shinji Mikami, has created some of my all time favourite games and even gems such as Vanquish are games I replay constantly. Everything looked like what I wanted from a Mikami-made horror game, but oh how the train of hype and gullibility hit me full speed.
The first sign that this was going to be disappointing was in the writing, sure Mikami games aren't known for Shakespeare level conversations but what I witnessed in the first cut scene let me know immediately what I was in for, with the dead eyes on every character and one line pieces of dialogue that don't explain what's going on and why they are doing what they are doing. Sure, bad dialogue and bad voice acting? Fine, lets see if the story is interesting, is it? Yes, 'yes' in the way that leads me to ask "Huh, this is intriguing, where is the story? What's going on? Who's he?." I would love to say I got an answer to any of these questions throughout the game, but no, still after completing it I have no idea what was going on, after looking online for the plot it is apparent to me that you learn who you are, your past and what may be happening through little notebooks scattered throughout the game for you to find. Why should I have to look for the story? Imagine playing a story rich game like The Walking Dead where you only know what's going on by reading hidden comic book pages, who would find that acceptable? Very few, and The Evil Within should be no exception.
Now the look of the game. Here's where I'm split, the graphics of the game itself are fine, nothing special but they do the job, however, letterbox aspect ratio, anyone that's looked up gameplay or screenshots of the game will notice there are giant black bars taking up a third of the screen, this can not be changed in the menu and is incredibly frustrating, especially considering the main character, Sebastian, takes up another half of the screen, giving you very little area to actually see where enemies are. I can see what they were going for, some kind of claustrophobic feeling, I get it, doesn't mean I agree with it.
Now on to the difficulty, for me a survival horror game should be hard, you're trying to survive right? Well, The Evil Within deals with difficulty in the worst way possible, by just throwing more enemies on the screen and adding awful saves, the problem with this? The A.I. is awful, for example in chapter three there is an area surrounded by enemies with little area to move around in, when I was discovered by one of these enemies I used my weapons to kill it, then more came, I had no ammo, this lead to me running around in circles with enemies following me in a constant loop unable to do anything. I chalked this attempt down to me not looking for ammo and health. I restarted the chapter and looked as hard as possible for every little scrap and eventually had a decent amount of both, after all that searching It would be a lot easier this time right? No, I ended up circling with enemies behind me, only this time less enemies. Great...
So, I put two stars, the only reason I bumped it up is due to the creativity of the enemies and weapons, I love the art style of this game, each enemy looks different and varied and the detail in the guns and bosses are impressive, one of the few games I don't like but would happily buy an art book of. That's really it. The only positive thing I can think of.
Thank you for reading and please let me know of anything there is I can improve upon and let me know what you thought of the game, did you like it? If so, why? Thanks!
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