The Evil Within Review

[Remilia Scarlet]

 

 

 

 

The Evil Within is a very special game. I don't mean special in the sense that you would use for an indie title or obscure game. I mean special as in a truly unique experience, both from a storytelling perspective and in the experience itself. What sets The Evil Within apart from other games, both within the survival horror genre and in general, is apparent from the get-go. From the instant you first press Start on the game menu, you are assaulted with a grainy image of an empty psychiatric patient cell. Grime lines the walls and floor, letting you know that you are most certainly not going to have a good time here.And it does its damnedest to make you suffer.

 

The game lets you know from the start that your time in this hospital is going to be hell on earth.

 

I have immensely enjoyed my time with this game. While not perfect, the The Evil Within gets so much right that its flaws become trivial by comparison. Let's dive into the mind of the madman.

 

STORY

 

The story begins with our hero, Detective Sebastian Castellanos, and his friends Juli and Joseph responding to a homicide call at Beacon Mental Hospital. When they arrive, they find an awful lot of cop cars, but no cops. The trio investigate further to find the lobby a bloodbath, with bodies strewn everywhere. There is one survivor - a psychiatrist named Marcelo Jimenez. He says one thing before fainting: 

 

"Ruvik."

 

Viewing the security camera, Sebastian watches as the man presumably called Ruvik slaughters armed personnel with seeming ease, until he is knocked unconscious. Waking up tied upside down, he watches as a large man with a spiked mask eviscerates other unfortunate victims. This is where things get crazy, both metaphorically and quite literally. At this point, the player is mainly tasked with chasing a helpless inmate named Leslie, and trying to stay alive long enough to escape the nightmare. From numerous journal entries scattered around the world, we discover horrific acts of violence committed against experimentation victims by an organization known as MOBIUS for a project called STEM. Ruvik was one such victim, and the project unlocked his... potential. Avoiding spoilers, it caused him to go crazy with vengeance, and now he is striking back, with the newfound ability to warp reality to his desires and transform victims into hideous monsters.

 

Beacon Mental Hospital is one of the creepiest environments in recent memory.

 

Or it could all just be in Sebastian's mind. The sheer brilliance of The Evil Within is that it never tells you what is or is not real. Is the hospital the real world? Is the depraved, sick, twisted, disturbing reality that Ruvik controls the real world? We never know, but what we do know is that Ruvik is not human, not anymore, and he wants everyone dead, and will do anything to make it happen. The story is convoluted as hell, the acting is campy and cringy at times (but massive props to the cast for their passion), but every minute of it was enjoyable because as ridiculous as this game is, it fully embraced its B-movie roots, and it worked.

 

DESIGN

 

I don't even know where to begin for this section. The art direction is phenomenal and evocative. The locations are large yet claustrophobic. The grimy, worn look of the hospital and its surrounding area work wonderfully to evoke the sense of dread. The macabre art and design are effective and disturbing, and the enemies are straight up terrifying. Shinji Mikami has done an amazing job channeling his ideas here.

 

The game is absolutely beautiful to look at, and it runs at a consistent framerate with very few drops. Cutscenes are gorgeously rendered in high detail, and the in-game graphics are just about on par with the scenes.

 

While certain areas are kind of generic, the overall design choices are wonderfully varied and work well in their respective contexts. The overwhelmingly oppressive and depressing atmosphere consistently makes you shudder and sends tingles down your spine. You move forward through the levels with unsure, heavy footing. You fear combat because you never know if you can actually kill your foe. 

 

Oh boy.

 

Tango and Bethesda have done something few horror games in recent memory have been able to do - they made a horror game that brought meaning back to the words survival and fear. The Evil Within is a scary game, and for all the right reasons. The effective use of atmosphere and the top notch production values breathes life into the world of TEW and is so immersive, that I found myself playing for hours during a planned 1 hour session. The beautiful and excellent use of lighting and shadows added a menacing aura to the environments that many copycat games fail to capture, and the astounding sound design is the icing on the cake. Nothing is more unsettling than hearing DeBussy's Claire de Lune while walking around in a completely black environment, unsure of whether you will make it out of there alive. And it's not just that song - the entire soundtrack is simply top of the line work; some of the best music in a long while. 

 

GAMEPLAY

 

I know this is why many of you will be reading this review: How does the game actually play? My answer is twofold - it plays extravagantly well, but it does have some issues holding it back. The controls are tight and responsive, although moving is somewhat floaty and ends up having me run into traps sometimes. Contextual actions feel natural and the QTEs work well and don't feel like a cheap addition. Combat is brutal, and it is immensely satisfying to kill enemies. The high difficulty rarely feels cheap, in part due to the ability to lose pursuers and avoid combat completely, and also because, while yes, the game is very hard, it provides multiple ways to approach combat situations by way of the trap system.

 

The traps in this game work as follows: either they kill you, or they kill your enemies. Smartly activating and deactivating certain traps can save your skin in more ways than your gun ever can in this game. There are several types of traps, the most common of which are the tripwire and bomb. Deactivating these traps can yield trap parts, which can be used to build tools necessary for survival. However, deactivating them comes at the cost of giving your enemies more routes to you, so it is best to leave certain traps in place.

 

A typical tension cord trap. These will become very necessary to just simply avoid instead of disabling, due to the absurd amount of enemies in later chapters.

 

The resulting chaos of a triggered trap by one of the enemies is absolute glory and hilarity, and it does a lot by way of ammo conservation, mainly because there are SO MANY just lying around waiting to be triggered. 

 

Gunplay is responsive and natural, but the sway of the reticule when not upgraded makes getting headshots extremely difficult, so I suggest pouring upgrade points into that, as well as ammo capacity. Speaking of upgrades, they take the form of Green Gel, which can be found in canisters and is frequently dropped by enemies and bosses. Gel can be used to improve various attributes such as health capacity, the effectiveness of melee attacks, etc. Smashing open crates can also reveal some, though much less frequently. For an extra challenge, hoard all the gel you find and never spend it. It makes the game much harder, but it is doable, and the plus side is that when you start New Game +, you can get a massive headstart on the upgrades.

 

Stealth plays a very large role in The Evil Within. It is typically wise to avoid outright combat as ammo is a scarce resource. This is where the stealth kills come into play. By sneaking up behind an enemy, you can trigger a contextual action that has you drive your knife into their skull for an instant kill. another option is to completely destroy their body by burning them with a match, although they must be on the ground for this. Burning a corpse with a match will often yield a reward, and if another enemy is close enough, kill two birds with one stone. If you happen to have a world item (torch, cleaver, axe, etc) you can swing it for another instant kill.

 

In typical survival game fashion, there are environmental puzzles to be solved. They are not hard, and usually just take the form of find x path to y object to trigger z event, or some variant. Simple, but it allows for a nice break from the tension of the rest of the game. 

 

However, the elements that hold the game back are as follows. The chosen aspect ratio for widescreen makes it difficult to adequately pay attention to the surroundings, which has caused many a death for me. Thankfully, the developers released a patch that addressed this issue and allowed us to play in standard fullscreen mode. While, for the most part, the game is not unfair, there are several sequences that seem to serve only to take the mickey out of the player, and are unfairly difficult, either by throwing absurd amounts of enemies at the player, introducing near invincible enemies, or not making the objective clear enough. Some weapons feel underpowered, even against the weakest opponent, but overall, the weapons do appear to be balanced. The AI at times feels unbearably stupid, and at other times far too intelligent. As stated before, movement tends to feel floaty and can sometimes end up causing you to accidentally trigger traps.

 

Conclusion

 

If it wasn't obvious enough, I am in love with The Evil Within. Shinji Mikami, creator of Resident Evil, has returned to the genre he fathered twenty years ago, and has come triumphantly. The Evil Within is an ode to the glory days of survival horror, and a victorious return to form for the genre. It is brutally hard, sadistically egging you on to your doom, and unnervingly scary. The disturbing violence within will either upset you or delight you. It is a depraved work of art, one that will go down in the annals of Mikami's legacy, and one I invite you to experience.

 

FINAL VERDICT: 10/10 - Masterpiece

 

Mikami's return to the horror genre sent ripples through the gaming community. Many wondered if The Evil Within would be the game Resident Evil 5 & 6 should have been. It is. Brutally challenging but rarely unfair, overwhelmingly oppressive in its atmosphere, and genuinely scary, TEW is the horror game many have asked for, and have finally received. 

[Infected Elite]

i liked your review, however i wouldnt give it 10/10, id definitely say its a strong 8.7 though. it is a very very good game, maybe even underrated,

[NullRay85]

Neat review as always. while not perfect, I had a blast playing it.

8 / 10

[zombiesateme]

That is a pretty great review. I would give it 10/10 simply because I'm doing my Akumu run without upgrades and it is making me appreciate the game more in terms of being the spiritual successor to the original Resident Evil that I've been waiting for since '96.

[HKelly91]

I give it a 9/10: strong and unique story line, great characters, and gives you a challenge especially with akumu mode

[yellowwindow7]

10 out of 10 is a bit extreme for this game, I would say in my book it's a 7 out of 10.