“The Evil Within” is a 3rd person shooter survival horror game developed by Tango Gameworks, and published by Bethesda Softworks. The game is also directed by Shinji Mikami, the director of Resident Evil 1, and 4.
Initially I was incredibly excited for the Evil Within because I was a massive fan of games like Dead Space, and Resident Evil 4, and this game seemed to channel the spirit of these games while having an identity of its own. Now that the game is out, how does it hold up? Rather disappointing I must say.
This article will seem more like a review than my usual thoughts ones since I have a lot I want to cover, so I figure I’d just go all the way, and cover as much as I can.
This is based on one playthrough of the whole game on Survivor difficulty. As always with most of the things I write...SPOILER FREE!
Read the whole thing after the break!
Story
So starting off I want to get the worst
part of the game out of the way first: The story. Among this large section I
think the biggest issue in it is in the game’s first half…which is an absolute
lack of agency, or goal. The early portions of the game have main character
Sebastian wandering through the game’s various levels just…because. Seriously
the only reason he goes through anything in these levels is because they just
so happened to be the way to go in the game’s linear level progression. You do
not have a good reason of why you’re doing this, or some long term end-goal
that you’re trying to run towards.
With this lack of goal in the game, it can
rapidly get unengaging quickly since I never felt like I was working through
something in the game. I was just sort of going through the levels. I had to
turn off the game multiple times to “recharge my interest” because the game got
too boring to play for longer periods of time. That’s never a good sign.
Next up is the characters. There’s
literally hardly anything to say about these people since they are so uninteresting.
There’s nothing obviously defining about them, they do not go through
development, I never cared about any of them. It was like they were just
cardboard cutouts acting out the plot.
To top off the story section I’ll touch on
the actual “plot” of the story itself. Aspects of the plot (Owing to the lack
of agency I mentioned earlier) only really starts showing up well after halfway
of the game. It’s a fairly standard plot, but the various drops of what has
happened in the story when they happen I think were done rather well. At its
core this story doesn’t seem like to be that bad of a story at all. If worked
with properly it could be a very interesting thing to unfold. It’s just a huge
shame that the game spent its entire first half faffing around, and not
building upon this.
Atmosphere/Tone
Report
Now that we have the story out of the way I’ll
give the “report” on the game’s atmosphere, and tone. This part of the article
is not a criticism, and is rather just an assessment of what I personally found
the game’s atmosphere and tone to be like. This is highly subjective, and
people may prefer this aspect of the game one way better than another.
What I gathered from the game’s atmosphere
is that it initially tries to be tense, and scary, but later on evolves into a
much more action-oriented approach. The game will start off very slow-paced
requiring careful maneuvering to successfully progress. However these sections
are still very much gameplay mechanics-oriented rather than narrative-oriented
which in my opinion holds back potential for these sections to be truly
terrifying. This is not always a bad thing though, since it was clear it was
not the developer’s intent to ever do so.
Another aspect I feel worth noting is that
the game is incredibly over-the-top in many of its horror scenarios,
particularly the opening scene. This makes several of these scenes rather
comical unintentionally. In other scenes it makes such encounters feel like
exciting action showdowns with evil monsters.
In the later stages of the game the
attempts to try and create dark, brooding environments is partially abandoned.
There are many whole segments which take place in broad daylight, cities, or
places with generally good wide visibility. I refrain from saying that it was
abandoned entirely as among the later stages of the game there are still parts reminiscent
of the game’s earlier creepier levels.
All in all the game’s atmosphere is not
scary, and definitely does not have Silent Hill’s style of atmosphere. The
closest comparison I can think of is Resident Evil 4: a survival action
thriller game.
Gameplay
The gameplay mechanics are what I say are
the strongest parts of the Evil Within. It is what has kept me going in the
game where the story has failed.
The most commendable aspect of the gameplay
I would have to say is the game’s balancing in its difficulty, and inventory.
It is incredibly well-balanced. In more than just a few of these “scarce
resources” games I have found myself with extreme surplus amounts of supplies
since I was able to force myself to refrain from using such supplies at all, or
using them extremely cost-effectively. This is not the case at all in the Evil
Within. You do not have a reliable source of infinite damage which does not
require ammunition plus you are going to HAVE TO fight quite a lot of fights.
Put these two aspects together, and you are going to have to spend your resources.
However no matter how effectively I tried to use my resources I always felt
that I was always having just enough to barely scrape by, and was rarely
feeling like I was in a comfortable spot with surplus supplies. This is the
mark of a game which has done its balancing very well, and it helps contribute
a lot to the “survival” aspect of the game.
This limited amount of supplies also meant
that one could never get really comfortable with using just one weapon for most
of the game, and would have to mix it up rather frequently out of necessity
which also makes for interesting play.
The Agony Crossbow is the “non-standard”
piece of equipment in the player’s arsenal. Extra ammo can be constructed for
it by using trap parts looted from booby-traps in the world. While it may seem
like at times you have tons of these, they can very quickly drop very low when
you craft a few special bolts you need in a pinch. The bow’s various bolts
provided a good amount of variety although I wished that there was a way to see
what each bolt type did after their initial introduction (Assuming I didn’t
miss it somewhere)
The matches I thought also provided an
interesting layer to the gameplay. For example, in many encounters you can have
the choice of killing an enemy by shooting him three times in the head, or
shooting him once in the foot while using a match to finish him off. The choice
is made based on how resources are looking like at the moment, and is very
interesting. Also to add more strategic use to the matches, one can rig it so
that burning one enemy on the floor will also kill several other healthy
enemies. The fact that matches have these uses to them beyond checking for dead
enemies like I originally though makes them a very pleasant surprise.
Enemy
& Level Design Aesthetic
This part will be slightly shorter since I
don’t really have much to say on it.
Personally when compared to its spiritual
predecessor Resident Evil 4, the Evil Within falls off by quite a bit in this
department. The levels, enemies, and bosses are all not as visually diverse,
and/or interesting in comparison. There are a few areas which have an
interesting “concept” but just didn’t go all the way in making itself memorable
because it lacked in the visual aesthetic aspect.
The bosses are more interesting than the
standard game’s look and feel, but this really should be a given since they are
bosses after all. Even with that slightly higher standard taken into account
though I think that the bosses of the Evil Within just barely have enough of
their own charm to be engaging. The fights themselves though can be a small bit
confusing but nothing that breaks them completely.
Technical
Issues (PC Version)
I’m usually not one to dive too much into
the technical aspects of games since I am usually content as long as a game is
able to run “fairly well” after tweaking settings a bit. However, the Evil Within
just has so much problems in this part that I feel that they must be mentioned…even
if most people have probably already read about them a dozen times already in
other articles.
First off the most infamous trait of the
game is its decision to be locked at 30 FPS. This is becoming an increasingly
common trend in games these days mostly on consoles due to their more limited
processing power. This greatly hampers the fluidity of playing video games as
they end up not feeling as responsive as 60 fps. It may sometimes be a necessary
compromise on consoles due to the lack of processing power, but I see no reason
to do this on PC at all
Some companies have defended themselves by
saying that this is for a more “cinematic feel” for their games, but I feel
that this is only an excuse which holds no true weight. I don’t want to spend
the whole article talking about framerate, so for anyone who’s interested
Totalbiscut has made a video on the matter here: http://youtu.be/eXJh9ut2hrc
Bethesda has tried defending themselves in
the Evil Within’s case by saying that while this lock is in place it can be
disabled by messing with files, or console commands. This explanation is very
obviously flawed since it raises the question of why they didn’t just put the
option in the game instead of needing you to mess with external files.
Second is the utter lack of graphics
options. Going into the graphics options menu I saw only around five advanced options
for the game. Plus even with them all turned off the game barely looked that
much different from when it was running with all of them on.
This is a huge deal because it restricts
people with lower-powered computers from tweaking a game’s visuals to better
create a smoother experience. The only real setting left to play with would be
the resolution which I personally despise turning down since it produces very noticeable
jagged 3d model edges as opposed to graphics options which produce more subtle
downgrades.
Finally is the decision to have black bars
on the game’s screen for a more “cinematic” experience. I got used to them
after a long enough time, but I believe that still doesn’t change my thought on
them being extremely intrusive.
Like the framerate, the black bars can be
changed via console commands. However depending on how much you reduce them
this will cause the game’s camera to behave very strangely. Again this is
something I feel could’ve had more effort put into, and been integrated into
the game’s in-game options menu.
Verdict
The story of the Evil Within maybe had
potential, but it was executed in a way which rendered it almost worthless for
most of the game. While the gameplay is enjoyable enough to keep the game
afloat throughout its entirety, a lack of interesting design decisions keep it
from surpassing its other flaws. The lackluster PC port does nothing to help
matters for the game either.
Even with all that being said, based on my
overall enjoyment of the game, I will give the Evil Within a 6/10; an okay experience.
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