User Review : The Evil Within

Where Has the Horror Gone?

I label the year of 2014 in video games as the year of hype gone wrong. There were many games that had a lot of steam going forward toward their release dates only for many gamers declaring how boring or completely opposite the game was that they were expecting. Watch Dogs, Titanfall, Destiny, Assassin's Creed: Unity, Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes, and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 were games I paid close attention to or participated in experiencing given the amount of coverage they were getting per their reception from reviewer and gamer alike. The Evil Within is no exception. I am six months late in completing what is heralded as the return of survival horror, but it's better to be late than never. In this case, the correlation between the year of hype and The Evil Within is sadly bound together very tightly. The teaser question I pose is what I surmise is the question a good number of people had when playing The Evil Within.

Don't take this as a foretold premonition that I think the game is bad. The Evil Within does have some good things about it. What I primarily praise the game for is its gameplay, sound, and design. While they certainly aren't without their flaws, I have to say that they possess a lot more advantages than other aspects of the game.

The Evil Within is a third-person shooter with stealth gameplay. Stealth kills are instant kills as your character brings out a knife for a swift execution. Throwing bottles to a distant location to lure enemies there is an easy way to get a stealth kill. There are also hiding mechanics, but I seldom bothered to try them as many sections in the game don't have hiding areas or I just completely forgot about the mechanic altogether. Your character doesn't have the most physically impressive stats around. You can sprint for barely a few seconds before he gets winded and slows to an embarrassingly sluggish pace which opens you up for potential enemy attacks. His melee damage is equally abysmal as enemies can shrug that off. To remedy these incredible disadvantages, there is an upgrading system that I will explain in a bit.

Weapons cover your usual handgun, shotgun, sniper rifle, magnum, and grenades. The most unique weapon you obtain is the crossbow that fires a variety of bolts. You have the regular harpoon that can (when upgraded fully) have a fire effect. There is also the flash bolt for blinding enemies for a brief period of time, explosive bolts for detonation on or around enemies, the freeze bolt to freeze enemies whom you can then smash to pieces, and finally the shock bolt to stun enemies. All of these (save for the grenades to a point) can be upgraded as well.

Upgrades are achieved when you collect Green Gel that is littered throughout the game or dropped by enemies. There is no limit to how much you can find as it is extremely common. Upgrades for your character include increasing maximum health, sprint time, melee damage, and recovery from health items. This will remedy his base physical prowess. Weapon upgrades focus on damage, reload time, ammo capacity, increased accuracy, and increased critical hits. Your stock can be increased per the ammunition you obtain. Finally, the crossbow's bolts get their own upgrading section as the effectiveness of the bolts can increase with each upgrade. The fire added to the harpoon bolt is one such example.

Upgrading is only possible in what is known as Safe Haven. In this unknown area, you can manually save your progress and upgrade. There are two walls of lockers that you can unlock with keys you find in statues throughout the game. The open lockers contain either Green Gel or ammunition. When it comes to ammunition, it is very scarce in some ways. Enemies rarely drop ammo. The next recourse is to destroy boxes in the environment in the hopes of finding some. After taking a swing at said boxes that is reminiscent to a flailing of a baseball pitch, you may find ammunition. It is equally difficult and frustrating when you smash up boxes only to find either nothing or Green Gel. Not to be a negative prude, but this is something that bothered me a lot. I understand that there has to be a challenge somewhere, but the extent of the scarcity of ammunition just seemed to be too much. Smashing up empty boxes and enemies not leaving anything wanting for other weapons other than the handgun grew intolerable. I don't mind a challenge, but this was damn annoying.

Quite literally, every bit of ammo you get is precious. Those lockers in Safe Haven can be your best friends or worst enemies. Opening a locker only to get Green Gel can get very irksome; however, if you save your game before opening a locker, then you may get one with ammunition you desperately need. If not, then just reload your save file. Those keys are equally precious. I advise you to use them wisely.

Another precious resource are bits you get from traps you disarm. Ah, yes, the traps. Bear traps, trip wires, motion sensitive explosives, and the usual spiky death from above are all seen here. If you manage to disarm them, you get parts from them to create bolts for your crossbow. Trust me, you'll need them. The crossbow offers great advantage in combat. You will need as many bolts as you can given the scarcity of regular ammunition.

The enemies in this game can amount to being either cannon fodder or very overwhelming. You have your standard enemies that can be downed with simple shots, but quite a few need a lot more punishment. One easy way to get rid of enemies is to shoot them in their legs to knock them down and use a match to set them ablaze. Using matches on relatively durable enemies can engulf them in fire that disintegrates them. This permanently takes them out. Stealth kills and critical headshots are essential as well. Take note that not all headshots will eliminate an enemy. The most interesting enemies can be the bosses with you trying to figure out their weaknesses or ways to get around them, while a few others are pure bullet sponges. It's a shame that not enough initiative was taken for bosses as some of them are used repeatedly. Probably the most disappointing fight is the one with the final boss which consists of you using a rocket launcher and 50 caliber machine gun to defeat it.

Set pieces and graphics are hit and miss. I noticed very early on in the game that there is a lot of screen tearing; however, that seemed to lessen as the game progressed. What instead replaced that eye sore was pop in textures and muddy effects. While items and environments do load within a reasonable time, it is still very noticeable. Most environments present an eerie feeling. A good number of them are nice to look at, while some are quite literally twisted and bloody. Character designs and monsters were well polished and easy to see. Overall, the graphics were presentable.

Sound quality is rather good. The voice acting is nothing too noteworthy, but the monsters and gameplay effects sound great. Sneaking around can lead you to learning how certain enemies sound. Everything is clear enough to be able to know what is ahead. As such, you may have your own ways of dispatching them. I can't really say much on the music as I can't really remember anything in particular. It's a shame really. Music can help set the tone for a horror game at the right moments.

One thing that took getting used to was the camera. Good grief is the camera set up pushing the boundaries for third-person perspective. Again, over time you will get used to it, but tight spaces make for poor visibility as the camera pans ever closer to the character. If you want to avoid feeling claustrophobic, you won't be able to when venturing into a small room or vent.

What I primarily took issue with was the incredibly incoherent story combined with what felt like spoon-fed buzz words from games media to get everyone hyped on how horrific The Evil Within is. Which I can without so much as a flinch tell you is a load of you-know-what. Anticipating the horrific experience that so many others glamorized from their playthroughs made my curiosity grow even more. I love survival horror and getting scared. Shinji Mikami and Bethesda working on a new horror game sounded great. Fast forward to the present where I am still trying to understand what happened in that game.

Your character is Sebastian Castellanos, a detective drawn to the call of a grisly attack on a hospital. The arrival of Sebastian, his by-the-book partner Joseph, and the female rookie in training Juli bring about a big mystery. The three are seemingly attacked by a figure in a white cloak and taken to a nightmarish realm of gore and warped atrocities. Sebastian is constantly under attack from a variety of enemies, while trying to get answers on what is going on around him. How everything is the way it is is because of the primary antagonist known as Ruvik.

Ruvik has reality bending abilities that are on par with or surpass a good number of fictional characters that I know of. What makes me question Ruvik's character is this: if he is so influential/powerful in this game, how is it that he cannot find the person he is looking for and put an end to Sebastian? He easily dispatches of a few characters, yet would rather concede to his cronies doing the fighting for him. Sure, he goes after Sebastian a couple of times in the game, but what's honestly stopping him from crushing an entire room with Sebastian in it? He can teleport, summon common enemies and bosses, create duplicates of himself, transport you and others to multiple places, and cause his targets to hallucinate. Ruvik is presented to be all-knowing and all-powerful, but the lack of polish in the design of both Ruvik and the game itself has you bouncing from location to location like a pinball.

Yes, your set pieces are wonderful, but this whole thing is being tied together with a rusty wire on the verge of snapping. What point is there to be had when Sebastian is teleported to the countryside or a dungeon or the hospital or the ruined city or a mansion or a cave? It all seemed to be a swift teleport to a new random location, get very little information, fight the monster of the chapter, and the next chapter begins. You have no context on how close you are to your goals or what still needs to be done.

Even if I tried to tell you what was going on in The Evil Within, I would miserably fail to do so. I really made the endeavor to understand the plot (via playing the game and researching online), but there are still more questions than answers. There are very little cutscenes to get information from and what is actually given isn't significant enough to really care about even when the game bothers to give you real context nine chapters in. You heard me, folks. The most viable information provided happens in Chapter 9 out of fifteen in total. It's Destiny all over again. If you cannot give context of the story in the game and would rather leave your audience in ominous bewilderment to the point where their immersion is broken due to them having to go outside of the game for information, then you failed to make a cohesive story.

As scatterbrained as the plot is, what's even more of a mystery is what The Evil Within is trying to be. I'm thoroughly convinced that horror was the intended goal within the cracks of its perplexing narrative. The problem is that The Evil Within has so many ideas that are being implemented that it seems on par with someone trying to forcefully put together puzzle pieces that obviously don't fit properly. That's what The Evil Within feels like with its approach on horror. It wants the shambling corpses, hulking monsters, twisted imagery, unfiltered gore, supernatural hauntings, and psychological turmoil in one neat gift-wrapped package. All of these elements being sloppily put together is the ultimate problem The Evil Within has. They want these elements to blend perfectly, but it's an undeniable mess due to a lack of focus and overemphasis on action. Hence, there is a serious identity crisis going on here.

I know everyone has their triggers and sensitivities to horror, but this game did not do it for me. It simply wasn't scary at all. The loading screens provided more ideas for legitimate terror than what the main game offers. It still baffles me on how much action there is as opposed to real survival horror. There was nothing in this game that I can say that I was genuinely frightened by. What do I have to be scared of when I'm given a turret section with a 50 caliber machine gun at the ready or running down a hall avoiding instruments of torture? That is not horror. It's action set pieces that are filled with nothing but noise and questionable objectives with some creepy imagery.

What feels like a melding between Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill instead leaves me with more confusion than anything. Where is the creativity? Where is the horror? Because it certainly is not in this game. I'm not entirely sure if this could be the second coming of the survival horror genre for gaming, but incohesive storytelling and flawed focus is the downfall of The Evil Within. Good gameplay, sound, and graphics can only get a horror game so far if it is not scary in the first place or have any sense of continuity. I really wanted to like this game, but it just grew too infuriating at times. My recommendation is to rent it before considering a purchase.