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    The Evil Within

    Game » consists of 14 releases. Released Oct 14, 2014

    While investigating a mass murder, Detective Sebastian Castellanos descends into a gruesome, nightmarish world. This third-person survival horror game marks the debut of Tango Gameworks, a studio headed by Resident Evil progenitor Shinji Mikami.

    macholucha's The Evil Within (PlayStation 3) review

    Avatar image for macholucha

    A Stellar Illustration Of Generic Survival Horror

    Sometimes it feels unfair to judge a game based on promises from the outside, that the game itself on the box doesn't promote... However the fact that it was "developed" by Shinji Mikami being a prominent feature of the game's advertising (that's how they've written it on Amazon), and constant references to how he was the mastermind behind the original Resident Evil games... Then it's hard to not build up expectations...

    And guess what, it plays and handles just like Resident Evil 4... To the extent that it feels like it completely ignores the last decade of innovation in gaming.

    Hell, this game has a callback to RE1 with a zombie biting a head off... Call it an easter egg or throw back all you like... It reeks so much of "Hey, this is basically RE, you liked that right? Like this too then! ...Please?"

    The aiming feels awkward and cumbersome, and you can't "run and gun", making the controls feel incredibly stiff when you having to create distance between yourself and the enemies, just so you have sufficient time to pivot in place and carefully aim. Inventory management can be incredibly frustrating, especially with the way things are grouped.

    The weapons themselves feel flimsy, the shotgun in particular doesn't feel like it has much stopping power. I liked the crossbow, having different bolts to craft adds another layer of trying to work out which tool is most effective for the current task, but I forgot it even existed for the first two thirds of the game.

    The bosses are some of the laziest, shoe-horned in encounters I've seen in quite some time, some of them don't have any build up and just appear. They also differ between some needing the old "attack the weak spot" (though you're given such poor feedback on some it's hard to tell if you've hit it or not), and some just being pure bullet sponges. Variety is fine, but going back to the weakpoint issue, it's hard to tell which category a boss falls into at times. Bosses also make several reappearances... While I liked the dangly limb lady boss enough... I was so sick of fighting her by the end of it...

    The AI is also pretty terrible at times... Watching enemies get stuck at the bottom of a ladder while you hurl grenades down kind of destroys the tension...

    While ammo isn't exactly scarce, the sheer number of enemies can make you churn through it fast than you expect. It doesn't help that the melee attack is completely worthless.

    You can upgrade by strapping yourself into a chair and spending brain juice (a green jar you collect in the world), and you're given a lot of options to upgrade... But most feel meaningless or are so incremental that it's hard to notice their effects. You're also not given actual values for damage done, only percentages, which makes it hard to determine which upgrades are more beneficial, is 160% pistol damage better than 120% shotgun damage?

    The level design feels uninspired, most levels being straight corridors with the tiniest of side areas. Also, the transition between chapters being a fade to black that teleports you in a completely different location with no explanation, gets really annoying and feels like a lazy "we couldn't work out how to connect these areas, oh well".

    So getting onto the actual story... These fades to black? Unexplained. The room where you strap yourself to a chair? Unexplained. Why you travel to a rundown mental hospital (that's presumably in your mind) when you look in particular mirrors? Unexplained. Basically, anything other than things absolutely necessary to the main story gets completely ignored. You're just expected to shrug and move on. Some backstory for Sebastien (our brave hero) is given by finding letters in world (from his missing(?) wife... really), but I found one near the end that just seemed to stop halfway through the story... So unless you actually find them out of order, even that seems unresolved...

    Sebastien as a protagonist completely sucks... He's completely indifferent to the majority of events in the game, and it really hurts the experience. Teammates go missing and his reaction will be "oh...". His flip flopping between ultra athletic action cop in cutscenes to his "can't run longer than 3 seconds before stopping to catch his breath for 5" gameplay really grates too.

    Weirdly the accompanying cast are far more likeable and fleshed out than Sebastian is, Joesph has a really well written internal struggle to come to terms with what happens to him.

    I guess the best way I can sum up the story is also the most damning thing I could say about a story... It's just boring, and frustrating with how much it just expects you to let slip.

    Visually the game looks pretty good... Once all the textures have popped in. The environments are rather uninspired though, lots of straight hospital corridors, rusted walls, miscellaneous stuff littered around the environment that doesn't make much sense for it to be there. The zombies aren't anything interesting to look at either...

    In terms of being survival horror, it hits all the most generic standards of that genre that it could... But does nothing new. A promising story gets completely ruined by its refusal to explain itself. Puzzles that are inserted simply because it's a survival horror game... If you enjoy that type of game and just want a new one to play, the game is completely fine and playable in that regard...

    I enjoyed, I'd say, probably the first half of the game, it starts out strong and Joshua in particular stands out as a highlight... But realising that so much wasn't going to get explained (which becomes incredibly obvious that it isn't) puts a real downer on the game...

    Other reviews for The Evil Within (PlayStation 3)

      This game is great! Don't listen to negative reviews! 0

      Just finished it and i got to say if you like Resident Evil 4 ,Silent Hill and survival horror in general you should pick this up , Shinji Mikami did a great job with this , it's one of his best atmospheric games and best art design i have ever seen in a game. It is the kind of game that will stick with you for a long time.The only bad thing is that sometimes the controls can feel a little stiff but that it's a minor thing compared to the greatness that is in this game....

      1 out of 1 found this review helpful.

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