The Evil Within Review

It's hard to imagine how someone follows up, possibly the most influential game of the last decade. You can see pieces of RE4 in nearly every third-person action game produced after 2005.

The Evil Within is a return to form — specifically, a return to the form game director Shinji Mikami popularized in 2005's Resident Evil 4. Back then, Mikami worked at Capcom and decided to evolve the survival horror series he had started by blending in more action elements.

And that's forgetting is also responsible for the original, and countless others. For much of his career, Mikami's had the golden touch. The creator's latest comes with understandably high expectations, and while there are moments when rises to the occasion, it's a deeply flawed experience that's more prone to generating frustration than fun 'n scares. Running away is usually a good option in The Evil Within. You don't have to kill everything.The Evil Within opens with detectives, and headed to a gruesome scene at Beacon Mental Hospital.

Mutilated bodies litter the lobby, and it's unclear who's responsible. Castellanos discovers a supernatural presence with the ability to zip around the room at lightning speeds, and the trio's backup is quickly dispatched. All three are pulled into a hellish, everchanging nightmare under the control of a hooded man named. Everyone around them has turned into zombie-like creatures with a penchant for murder, and thus begins a journey to figure out what the hell is going on. Spoiler alert: it gets really weird.When The Evil Within was first unveiled, it looked as though Mikami was simply picking up where he left off with RE4, and the comparison holds up pretty well. Think of The Evil Within as RE4 with a serious stealth component and you're mostly there. Players guide Castellanos from a third-person perspective, often with a gun drawn and a lamp bobbing nearby, skulking around environments filled with dangers.

Ammunition is scarce from start to finish, making The Evil Within one of the first games to live up to the survival horror moniker in a long time. This means confrontation isn't always the preferred route.

Stealth kills are one-hit affairs, and it's possible to light various objects on fire with matches to take out nearby threats, as well. Taking advantage of these and other opportunities is crucial to moving forward. You cannot shoot everything in the head here. You'll occasionally team up with Kidman and Oda in scenarios eerily reminiscent of, but those moments are few and far between. Castellanos is on his own.While the game stumbles out of the gate with a series of poorly structured tutorials, it settles into a familiar pace a few hours in.

It's not a good sign when a game requires hours of patience before it's worth playing, but The Evil Within turns around. In yet another nod to RE4, Castellanos comes across a quiet village that's-surprise!-hiding a bunch of enemies. This section shows The Evil Within at its best, even if it's a high point the game reaches only a few other times. It's an enormous, layered environment with ample opportunities to experiment with everything available to players: stealth, traps, guns, running, hiding, etc. There's room for failure here, but there's always a sense of danger that keeps you tense.

Key to success in The Evil Within is planning, execution, and improvisation. Since you're trying to conserve ammunition, manipulating stealth and traps is essential, but an enemy might make an unexpected turn. Or another enemy shows up. Or you set off another trap. There are countless reasons a plan implodes, but The Evil Within's combat is versatile in these open environments, and players can devise new approaches.There are times when The Evil Within derives intense anxiety from the opposite scenario, too. One harrowing sequence involves navigating a simple series of rooms and hallways with invisible enemies stalking you in the dark.

A chair will get knocked across the room, announcing an enemy presence, but other than a Predator-like shimmer, little else reveals what's out to get you. It still gives me the creeps.How you approach an encounter can vary wildly, thanks to a welcomed variety in weaponry. Of course, there's the standard pistol, shotgun, and sniper rifle, but the agony bow is what's unique here. The agony bow can hold many different types of ammunition, so it changes functions on a dime. This includes bolts to send enemies flying, flash bombs to blind everyone around you (allowing for one-hit stealth kills mid-fight), freeze arrows with the ability to ice anyone within a few feet, and mines that can be placed anywhere in the world.

More arrows become available as the game continues, and players both collect ammunition scattered throughout the environment and build their own by dismantling the many traps around them. Those big black bars are omnipresent in The Evil Within, even during gameplay.There are a handful of sequences when The Evil Within really clicks, the result of a designer strategically deploying his chess pieces, reflecting decades of experience. But the pacing of The Evil Within is relentless, and the creativity can't keep up.

The moment you've cleared one room of enemies, there's another set around the corner. Not all encounters are created equal, and this becomes more and more apparent as you progress.

Rather than finding new scenarios in which you must develop new strategies, The Evil Within deploys more of the same with enemies requiring more bullets, creatures who can take you out in a single strike, and an endless array of boss battles meant to crush your soul.Oh, lord, the boss battles. The Evil Within peaks early with a chainsaw-wielding maniac a la RE4 (notice a trend?), and with rare exceptions, nothing else ever comes close. What makes the chainsaw sequence work is his methodical pursuit. He lumbers forward in a way that gives you plenty of time to line up a shot, but it's not long before he's close, and you're forced to scramble away. (The other highlight, involving a dude with a safe for a head, works the same way).

The Evil Within's other bosses largely involve bullet sponges capable of killing you after a single mistake. Whereas the rest of The Evil Within rewards planning, execution, and improvisation, the boss battles are little more than pumping a dog/lizard/whatever full of bullets. Castellanos isn't particularly nimble, which works just fine, since the enemies he faces aren't, either. But the bosses are capable of much more, creatures regularly lunging huge distances. It makes the battles especially frustrating, as the weighty character feels unfairly at odds with what's being asked.Did I mention you face several bosses multiple times? Did I mention the game decided to bring some of them out three times, as part of a boss endurance run at the very end?

The bizarre design logic is capped off by an on-rails final boss battle favoring spectacle, requiring little more than holding the fire button and waiting for the ending cutscene to kick in. It's a game that often can't help itself but indulge in every whim. The Evil Within isn't so much scary as it is tense, but in some ways, that's more intense.I watched The Evil Within's cutscenes, but couldn't say what happened.

Mikami's games have always been campy, convoluted affairs, and The Evil Within is no different. But it's a waste of otherwise talented actors given very little to do.

Apparently, hired Dexter's Jennifer Carpenter to show up for a day's worth of work, as she voices only a handful of lines throughout the whole game. (She does, however, have her own DLC coming later.) This underscores the muddled plotting more generally, a game whose A story-genetic tampering something something bad stuff oh wait there's monsters-is what's presented in the cutscenes, while the B story-a detective driven to alcoholism by the loss of his child and, eventually, wife-is only given lip service through awkward diaries.It's probably worth noting the game's letterboxing at this point, too. The Evil Within's aspect ratio is 2.50:1, which translates to an extremely thick set of black bars at the top and bottom. While aesthetically unique, the game rarely leverages the aspect ratio to justify the amount of real-estate taken away from the player. Anytime you're asked to walk up or down a ladder, the bars become immensely frustrating. It's perhaps telling for the version gives users the opportunity to flip them off entirely, providing evidence the bars have more to do with preserving technical performance than servicing a creative vision.Speaking of the PC version, the game crashed nearly a dozen times during my 20 hours with it. Hmm.It's hard for me to remember a recent game that provoked as much whiplash as The Evil Within.

For every brilliant moment, there's a handful only worthy of exasperated annoyance. I haven't yelled at a TV screen and rage quit in a long time, but The Evil Within broke that streak. I mean, we're talking about a game believing one of its last sequences, minutes before the game is over, should involve stealthing a series of spotlights. There are good ideas hiding in The Evil Within, but finding them just isn't worth it.on Google+.

After my 23.5 hours with The Evil Within on its standard Survival mode, I was informed I had been eaten alive, had my head shattered, and my torso sliced into thirds a whopping 218 times. This wickedly creative, tense, and yes, tough game does not suffer fools gladly, yet I was compelled to return to it after the screen bled to red every time. That, I believe, is the definition of a great survival horror experience.The Evil Within is aesthetically, functionally, and spiritually in step with director Shinji Mikami’s last foray into the genre, the iconic Resident Evil 4. It’s not simply a rehash of that game, though, as Mikami and his new development studio Tango Gameworks have delivered a harder, bleaker game this time around. Not that the plot is a strikingly original work for the horror genre.

The Evil Within is an investigation of what appears to be a multiple homicide at Beacon Mental Hospital in its fictional Krimson City, before you realize things are not as they seem (an understatement). While its central mystery starts off as compelling, it gradually veers off course, and eventually buckles under the weight of its own unfocused ambition. I found its ending in particular, complete with an unnecessary boss battle apparently inserted only to serve the story, disappointing.In part, this narrative wrapper is undermined by the rather lifeless player character, Detective Sebastian Castellanos, who is emotionless and cool to the point of parody.

Sebastian still quips mundanities like “what is going on here?” after hours of facing the kind of monsters that would drive the average person into a jabbering wreck. It’s hard to care about the stakes when it appears that he doesn’t, even if his calm detachment - “I must be losing it!” - is on occasion darkly comic.While far from subtle - this is about as excessive as a horror game gets - Tango has created some incredibly strange and wonderful places in The Evil Within’s 15 chapters. Even the usual horror cliches have been twisted and contorted in imaginative ways; meat lockers, clanging industrial interiors, and mannequins have been granted new and ghastly life.Zooming in, these places are small and linear level designs, yet with the aid of excellent lighting, they become claustrophobic and labyrinthian. Despite a little roughness around the edges - I noticed texture pop-up and clipping issues in the PS4 and Xbox One versions - the game has been beautifully designed. Tango has employed a keen eye for composition in The Evil Within, and interiors are grimy, full of looming shadows, ornate architecture, and ominous escape routes. They create a terrifying mood of expectation.

Once or twice I found myself ducking to avoid an attacker that was revealed to be my own (harmless) shadow, or running from an unseen enemy only to realize nobody was chasing me bar the groans of some distant foe.Otherwise, the threat here is very real. Enemies that pepper these places are plentiful, unpredictable, and smart. Initially evoking Resident Evil 4’s shambling ganados, they get weirder as The Evil WIthin progresses; not quite The Infected, more The Perverted; designed with an eye toward childhood nightmares and heavily inspired by Japanese horror movies. I wouldn’t be surprised to see some of these foes - in particular, the unforgettable Keeper boss - come to define The Evil Within as time moves on, cosplayed for years and endlessly re-imagined in fan art. It is The Evil Within’s most unnerving juxtaposition that combat with these terrors is so grounded in reality. You are given only a modest but well-balanced arsenal - the usual pistol, shotgun, sniper rifle, grenade and crossbow combo - with which to fight, as well as basic melee. And while the crossbow caters to a variety of special attacks (freeze, electrocute, harpoon, etc) and shooting is as satisfyingly crunchy as you would expect from Mikami, you have little ammo, first aid, or even stamina at your disposal.

Cruelly, for a game where I spent a lot of time running away, Sebastian runs out of puff very quickly. Checkpoints are scarce, so the stakes in this hostile world are high, making for exhilarating experiences regardless of whether you decide to flee or fight as these creatures run - screaming - towards you.The Evil Within does cater somewhat to those who wish to choose the stealth route, although the AI feels unfairly tuned in on you. You can lay traps or distract enemies by throwing bottles and sneak up behind them for a stealth kill, but more often than not they’ll turn around at the last second, or will have already spotted you several seconds ago. Playing stealthily works in fits and starts, but I did not find it the most accessible gameplay style to adopt.Of course, you’re not completely powerless.

One of The Evil Within’s most enjoyable mechanics is its simple upgrade system. ‘Green gel’ is the limited resource that you use to improve your abilities, weapons, stock and crossbow bolts while in safe houses, and it’s dispersed throughout the world like hidden gold, becoming your most sought after resource. While cashing in this gel makes for strong dilemmas of choice - do you upgrade your shotgun damage, or do you want to be able to run for longer?

- I liked how it let me shape my own gameplay style and gave me a brief, if generally illusory, sense of control of the situation. Such pockets of calm are welcome because its chaos, not control, that is the point of The Evil Within. The pacing of the action and horror propels you forward at breakneck speed, moving from one climactic encounter to the next with little to no reprieve. Throughout my playthrough, I always felt on the backfoot, and the times when I was really on the backfoot - I’m talking six in the sniper rifle chamber facing a close-combat boss, here - produced some of the most incredible moments I’ve experienced in any video game for years. It had me sweaty-palmed, heart in my throat, for most of its duration. Pros.

Fantastic survival gameplay. Terrifying enemies. Well pacedCons. Convoluted story.

Boring protagonistThe VerdictThe Evil Within is a brutal, challenging, and remarkably fun game. Its eerie world and imaginative enemies are genuinely frightening, and the scares are heightened significantly by the scarcity of resources at your disposal.

It keeps the odds stacked against you to the point that they often feel insurmountable, yet it’s finely tuned to ensure that they never really are, as long as you can keep a cool head and a steady aim in the face of building panic. While its story ends up buckling under its own ambition, there is little here that takes away from the joy of experiencing survival horror under the steady hand of a master of the craft.