Chris Sealy from The Koalition writes:
"From the first chapter of The Evil Within, the game feels familiar, dated, and somewhat stale. This is only true if you’ve actually played old survival horror game titles like Resident Evil (especially Resident Evil 4, which shares the same game director, Shinji Mikami), Dead Space, Silent Hill, Fatal Frame, and other 3rd person titles in that genre.
I was among many who was eagerly anticipating the release of The Evil Within because of how much I loved playing Resident Evil 4 and how much I loved the early Silent Hill games. Another throwback to the survival horror roots seemed really exciting! But unfortunately, it’s true to be careful what you wish for, because you may get it."
The Outerhaven writes: While I hold Bethesda's The Evil Within series as some of the best Survival Horror games available, it's clear that Bethesda has no intention of revisiting the series. While Capcom is still working on its Resident Evil series, I look back at the now-dead survival horror series from Bethesda, wondering why the series was left wide open, and yet still not revisited.
An OK horror series left behind. It had some great ideas, but it never knew how to play to its strengths. Instead, it came out like just another RE4 clone.
I would love for a third entry to come out, but it needs to learn to lean in on the psychological aspect and move away from the generic "pew pew" ideology at the center of the gameplay loop. It doesn't need to abandon it; it just needs to put it into better context, is all.
Also, try a first-person perspective instead. Too many 3rd-person games with nothing to offer but an avatar taking precious screen space. At least make it an actual option and not that janky-ass mess the second game pretended to have.
Tango Gameworks was working on new The Evil Within content & had a 6 months old prototype of Hi-Fi Rush 2 in the works prior to closure.
...they didn't close, they changed owners. As far as i know HFR2 is still in the works.
Hifi 2 is still in development. The devs themselves said what they wanted to do with the sequel.
The Evil Within Anniversary Edition?
Good God. We were robbed.
I would imagine they would have improved the graphics and animations to bring them more in line with the second game. Wishful thinking but it would have been really cool if they redid the voice lines from the first game aswell with the same actors from the second, I felt they had more personality in the sequel. The only person I thought gave it a bit more than the others was Jennifer Carpenter as Kidman but the sequels voice actress did a great job aswell.
Microsoft is going to do f*** all with the IP and we'll never see a second Ruvik and Seb showdown.
I hope Krafton goes back and gets it after Hi-Fi Rush 2 if it was only because they didn't want the initial purchase to get complicated.
I wasn't really making a point at what game was overall better, just the voices were so flat in the first one and it would be nice if the animations and the like would be improved upon.
I really got to get around to playing the first one, I really liked the second game.
It hurts so bad knowing that there might have been new content for Evil Within..love those games
What a stupid, short sided move by Microsoft. Comparatively it would have been cheap for them to hang onto their only Japanese studio, with actually good games that people want to play. I struggle to understand how Phil Spencer is still employed. At this point it is Kathleen Kennedy levels of failure.
Well said about him being Microsoft's version of Kathleen Kennedy.
All he has been doing is to destroy Xbox and it is unbelievable he falls upwards.
The Evil Within, Ghostwire: Tokyo and Hi-Fi Rush studio has closed its doors.
Ninja theory. Others will follow as well. The smaller studios MS owns should all be worried. Maybe MS will try and release some of their games day and date on ps5 to save some of these studios.
I can see Ninja Theory. At least Tango made a game that was reviewed well. Ninja Theory spent a lot of years to release a tech demo that didn’t do well at all.
I get it that Hellblade 2 is a boring game, but I hope they are not the next to be closed.
@repssahj
Ninja Theory is likely on the chopping block too. They released Bleeding Edge which bombed, took 4 years to release Hellbalde 2 which doesn’t seem to be doing well, and still have Project Mara in limbo. They’re high on the chopping block.
MS was likely expecting their God of War / Uncharted quality game from NT based on Heavenly Sword, Enslaved, DmC, and to an extent Hellblade 1, but NT hasn’t delivered since Hellblade 1 which was 7 years ago.
3 trillion MS is worth, yet they do this, well Phil the shit bag did. No studio needed to be let go, when you are worth this much.
Sad, but I see characters and posters of either less than average or barely average games.
Have to disagree here duder, with respect. Evil Within was a good game and the sequel was fantastic, as was HiFi Rush. I'd concede Ghostwire was pretty average but regardless, shuttering a studio which just put out MS best game in donkeys years was complete shithousery on XBox' part.
Microsoft paid 8B to buy Zenimax then fired well over 1000 people from Zenimax between the time they closed the deal and they announced these shut downs.
People talk about the 1900 they fired most recently, but that was only one wave of three sets of layoffs from their gaming division so far this generation totalling around 5000 people this generation. Not counting the dozen plus studios they canned last gen including Lionhead the original Fable developers.
By every real metric HiFi was an average game. I don't see an Evil within poster in the thumb, which is a shame, because if they threw their weight behind that IP, they might have still been around.
I don't understand how you can say it was average in every metric when it garnered the reviews it did?
I really wish this game had a more linear story. As is, it comes off as disjointed and confusing. That being said, I really did enjoy this one, it just could have been a lot better.
I'm just glad the game didn't suffer from the ever-looming hype debacle. The Evil Within was received well by some and terribly by others, but I think it could have been a lot worse. I wasn't expecting too much in the way of this game - survival horror has certainly changed over the years - and I feel others felt the same. Great article, Chris.
I must admit that I had some pretty high hopes for this game. Having played it at E3, there was something that just felt off about it. One could make the case that the game shouldn't be played in a show setting but i have heard people complain even while playing on their consoles at home. Yeah this game definitely could have been better but hopefully the developers are aiming to make a much more improved experience the second time around.
It's a fantastic game but the dialogue is the main thing which ruins it, that and the crappy voice actor
The guys behind this think you can't have dialogue or interaction when the characters are together and have to wait until a cutscene to do that.
I'm playing this game now and I can honestly say that it gets old real quick.
The game should have ended at chapter 9 but for some reason it just keeps going and going. I started to get a headache from the monotonous gameplay.
Seriously, guy walks down bloody looking hall, screen starts to shake, guys head hurts, he falls to another bloody hospital/church room somewhere else, rinse and repeat. My head was hurting at how many times they used this tactic to put the player somewhere else.
I found myself just wanting the game to end because nothing was getting explained, I had no clue what the heck was going on until chapter 9 and even then it was vague.
The quality is there though, it is a well produced game and the enemies are terrific looking. This game is cross between Silent Hill and RE4, which is not a bad thing. The direction of the story and pacing needs to be tightened up though.