The Evil Within

Alternate Title: ArbitraryWater versus Grindhouse Bootleg Resident Evil and its barbed-wire friends

Though the Metacritic stands at a respectable 75, I’d say the general reception of The Evil Within was far more... mixed when it came out last October, one of those games that I knew I’d have to play for myself to have any sort of concrete opinion on. One of the advantages of getting a PS4 during the summer drought months is that I’ve been able to catch up on stuff I’ve missed, either from last year or earlier this year without much threat of something new coming out and stealing my attention. One borrowed copy later, I can say with some amount of certainty that The Evil Within is a decent but decidedly inconsistent game, just as capable of being good (I hesitate to say “great”) as it was capable of being abjectly frustrating.

It might not surprise you, given that Shinji Mikami is the creator of Resident Evil, that The Evil Within (or, to use its way better Japanese title: Psycho Break) acts almost as a continuation of Capcom’s flagship franchise about running away from camera angles and using cranks (Or something like that; Capcom clearly doesn’t know either at this point), to the point where this game felt at times like a bizzaro alternate-world grindhouse sequel to Resident Evil 4. And indeed, at its best, The Evil Within does a pretty great job of evoking RE4 while doubling down on ammo conservation (the “Survival” part of Survival Horror). Most of the enemies you fight are shades of Ganados/Majini; not-zombies who usually want to get close in order to strangle/stab/shoot you, usually in environments littered with traps. The medium “Survivor” difficulty gives you enough ammo that you don’t ever feel like you’re starved but never gives you enough to be truly comfortable (probably helps that capacity for extra rounds is at a premium until you upgrade it), especially early on in an environment that very much evokes the opening village from RE4. If there’s something I can say is absolutely spot-on about the combat, it’s that the weapons feel nice and weighty, with even the basic police revolver being capable of taking out your garden-variety enemies in 2 or 3 shots to the head (or you can shoot them in the leg to knock them down, then set them on fire with a match), to not even get into the bolt-action rifle or the obligatory boss-killer magnum, which you should probably save for killing bosses because I got something like 8 extra rounds on top of the 6 it comes with. While the game gives you a fairly generous amount of “Green Goo” (upgrade currency), the number of things you can (and would want to) spend it on are numerous. Every weapon, type of crossbow bolt and item capacity can be upgraded, along with your health, stamina, melee damage (not worth it) and healing efficiency. Of course, the way the upgrade costs scaled made me more partial towards putting a few points into everything here and there rather than trying to max out any one of my weapons

Of course, you don’t have to approach situations guns blazing, you can place your own traps in the form of explosive bolts and there’s also a rudimentary stealth mechanic to the game… which like the rudimentary stealth mechanics in all games that aren’t focused around being sneaky, sort of sucks and is of limited usefulness given how slowly Sebastian crouch walks. Aside from an especially dire early-game sequence (I’ll get to that later), it’s pretty much optional and at best you’ll get a stealth kill or two before dudes spot you and you must resume the always prescient option of “Shoot them in the damn head (or legs)”. Of course, if you don’t want to set off the absolute boatload of traps in the game (one of the ways The Evil Within has to make sure you take things nice and slow), you’re gonna be crouch walking more than you might want to. Maybe it’s more important on stupid hard AKUMU difficulty (in the grand tradition of RE5 Professional and DMC Heaven and Hell, you die in one hit from everything), but I found it half-baked at best.

If The Evil Within at its best recalls Resident Evil 4, then The Evil Within at its worst recalls Resident Evil 6. It’s never as bad as that particular trainwreck of a video game (that I still have a weird, semi-ironic fondness for), but it does have its share of hot bullshit insta-death. Speaking of bad stealth sequences, oh boy does the beginning of the game have one of those. While I was able to get through the game’s rather rough opening without as much hassle as former Giant Bomb staff member and master spookster Patrick Klepek did, that didn’t stop me from dying a grand total of 60 times throughout the course of the game from shit where it didn’t matter how full my health bar was moreso than the combat encounters themselves. The encounters with the many-armed blood monster Laura are egregiously bad on this front, given that it’s all over if she grabs you and pumping bullets into her doesn’t do a whole lot. Then there are the times where the death isn’t instant, but it might as well be. Enemies chucking dynamite, molotovs and shooting at you while you’re stuck in a confined space? Stunlocked to death? That’s a thing. That stupid dog boss? That boss sure is stupid.Then there are the encounters that are simply… questionable. There’s a weird half-assed puzzle around halfway through the game that comes out of nowhere and makes the puzzles in RE4 look meaty by comparison. The end of the game has you avoiding spotlights before engaging in a final encounter that I’d describe as… underwhelming. These are all parts of what is otherwise an enjoyable whole but for as much as Psycho Break wants to be the successor to RE4, it lacks the polish and the consistency that makes Biohazard the Fourth (because Code Veronica doesn’t count) one of the greatest games ever made. This is the part where I’d talk about the letterboxing and how that sort of drove me crazy, but I found out that they patched in the ability to turn that off in the console versions, so that’s sort of a moot point.

You’ll notice I’ve refrained from mentioning the story up until now. That’s because it’s bad. Not funny-bad, not enjoyably pulpy bad, just forgettable and stupid. For as much as the game succeeds at establishing mood and atmosphere, the tale of Detective Sebastian Castellanos is a disjointed and nonsensical one, throwing you from one grimy environment to the next without much explanation until the end (when everything is revealed to be super dumb). The voice actors, mostly made up of B-tier hollywood actors (but also actual veteran voice actor Yuri Lowenthal whom I can seemingly recognize instantly at this point) doesn’t deliver their lines especially well, nor are the lines themselves very good. I’m not going to hammer on it too much, because it’s not worth doing so. Just be warned that if you’re looking for satisfactory answers the ones the game gives aren’t so great, complete with an ending that might as well be “It was all in a snowglobe!”

I feel bad if The Evil Within is actually Shinji Mikami’s last game as a director, because it almost has it. It’s almost the glorious return to survival horror nirvana that didn’t actually ever exist because that was always more of a buzzword than an actual genre and Resident Evil games were always generous with ammo by the end (except Zero). It’s almost the successor to Resident Evil 4 that people who were disappointed by Resident Evil 5 had in their heads. But it doesn’t quite work all the way. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy myself when I wasn’t yelling at my TV while my roommate laughed, but it’s not a game I can recommend unless you know what you’re getting into. What you’re getting is an interesting but flawed experience, a AAA game that is weirdly punishing in a way you wouldn’t expect from a big-budget action title. Given the surprisingly low percentage of players who have actually finished the game on any difficulty (12% according to trophy data), it might not be your thing. But given the number of people who also seem to really like The Evil Within, warts and all, maybe it will be your thing. If I were you, I’d still wait for a sale.