The Evil Within Review (PS4)

This October has been a busy month for survival horror fans and today we will have a look at highly anticipated game of 2014, The Evil Within, Shinji Mikami’s new game that has garnered a lot of attention from the press and fans alike.

 

 

 

Nothing is as it seems as we step into the world of Sebastian Castellanos, a detective of the Krimson City Department. He struggles to make sense of what has happened as he arrived at the crime scene only to be faced with macabre scenery filled with gory imagery and a lunatic armed with a chainsaw tearing apart corpses in what appears to be a slaughterhouse, a scene very much like out of a slasher horror movie. After he makes his escape he is briefly returned to what appears to be the real world but as the city seems to collapse in an earthquake, he and his comrades drive off a cliff into the abyss. He wakes up in a hospital bed and is greeted by a nurse, which doesn’t seem to know anything about what just happened. Things become even more confusing as Sebastian struggles to survive and make his way through a zombie infested village.

 

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Actually the story in The Evil Within is loosely connected leaving it up to the player to make sense of and piece it together. Despite its cryptic almost Silent Hill like story, the game’s horror atmosphere is anything but subtle. It features disturbing imagery and setpieces that are very much like out of your worst nightmares. It is heavily focused on gore and is not for the faint of heart. You will literally swim in blood on a few occasions and will witness mountains of corpses and mutilated bodies, not to mention the enemies which come in various not so appealing forms.

 

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The First and second chapter serve as a way to slowly ease you in on mechanics and techniques you will need to use in order to survive through the hordes of enemies and situations the game will hurl at you. And the game is good at giving you new and interesting challenges to overcome. Just as you learn get good at headshots, enemies start wearing masks. When you learn to use the environment to your advantage, the game surprises you with invisible enemies. Its fragmented story and setpieces work in its advantage as every chapter has a different theme and tone, which succeeds at making the game feel fresh.

 

Since the director of The Evil Within is Shinji Mikami it is natural that the gameplay is akin to that of Resident Evil 4, with the camera positioned closely at the protagonist’s back. Sometimes this can be a bit problematic as far as how much of the surroundings you can actually see. Also the viewing field is further obstructed by cinematic black bars which at times can get in the way of seeing exactly where the enemies are especially during intense confrontations.

 

Early in the game you will learn to sneak behind your enemies in order to perform a sneak kill. But apart from the opening and certain parts in the game there is not much stealth involved, so you will mostly blast through enemies with your weapons or kill them using disposable weapons you will find in the environment like axes and torches. Each of these will kill one enemy in one blow, but will also disappear once the enemy is down and you cannot stock up on them.

 

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The game can get challenging but you do get to choose between casual and survival setting at the start and later on can alter it to your liking. If you are haven’t played Resident Evil 4 and aren’t familiar with action oriented games your best bet is to stick with casual difficulty. Depending on the difficulty setting you will get different amount of ammo and auto aim enabled or disabled. On survival difficulty the resources are scarcer so you will have to rely on other ways to kill off the enemies. One of them is to lure them into traps, which can be good for ammo conservation. Or you can use one more tactic at your disposal and that is setting things and enemy bodies on fire with the matches that represent another resource that you need to get hold of. So if you time your fire right you can catch other enemies nearby on fire as well.

 

During the course of the game you will have quite an arsenal of weapons at your disposal. At the start you will use your trusty revolver, but as the game progresses you will find more powerful weapons like a shotgun, a sniper rifle, grenades and the Agony Crossbow, which is the most distinct weapon in the game. This weapon shoots different kinds of bolts that you collect throughout the game and later on craft by using trap parts. There are different kinds of bolts including explosive bolts, harpoon bolts, flash bolts that blind your enemies so you can sneak kill them, freeze bolts and more.

 

The Evil Within mixes things up by having an upgrade system. In order to upgrade your character and weapons you will need to spend points that you get by collecting green brain jars by killing enemies or by breaking boxes and searching the surroundings carefully. For example you can upgrade Sebastian’s sprint time or his maximum health, but also stock – that is how much of the ammunition, health recovering syringes and matches you can carry around. You will get to upgrade each of the weapons you carry and it is a good strategy to first upgrade the ones you will use the most.

 

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The game is light on puzzles and it involves disarming some types of bombs and some simple puzzles in the later part of the game most of which you will have no problems with. There will sometimes be a boss battle after boss battle so you will struggle for ammo. This is where the Agony Crossbow shines and is a way to use a weapon even if you get tight on ammo by crafting bolts as you probably have some trap parts at your disposal. Close combat is your last bet but sometimes it’s better to run as the game encourages you to do.

 

During some chapters you will have some of your friends to help you and it can feel a bit awkward having them as your companion, but in the end it all ties in with the game’s story and how it tries to represent different bonds the main protagonist has with these characters. On multiple occasions they will help you or you will have to help them and during the combat you will have an opportunity to heal them without using your own health recovery items.

 

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The game features some impressive architecture and locations and can look really stunning, despite being a transitional game released both on last gen and next gen consoles and also on PC. I’m sure the game would look even better if it was released for next gen consoles exclusively. Despite the black bars, the game has a sub-native resolution and struggles to run at a smooth 30 fps on consoles. However this has been fixed with the 1.01 patch. And also the game has a lot of issues with texture pop up. And on the PC the game can get very resource intensive as it is not very optimized. Occasionally the game would freeze or crash altogether.

 

There has been a talk of what is the better game – The Evil Within or The Alien: Isolation as they were released a week apart. I would argue that the games are too different to properly compare to each other. While The Evil Within is more action packed horror themed game with some really creepy and crazy moments, the Alien Isolation is more of a pure survival horror experience in which you are alone and are running from one single indestructible enemy – The Alien. They are in the opposite ends of the spectrum as far as the survival horror games go. The Evil Within feels a lot like a spiritual successor to Resident Evil 4, the game that brought us action packed horror experience that changed the Resident Evil franchise. Both games are good in their own right, but deliver totally different experiences. The Evil Within has fulfilled expectations for the fans of Resident Evil 4. If you want some good action and gore look no further.

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