The Evil Within

Shinji Mikami, the famous game designer and the wonderful team behind the project have apparently managed to piece together something that takes and updates Resident Evil 4 gameplay, blends it with Silent Hill atmosphere and throws in some Saw movie elements. Do the math and you get a horror action game that can definitely trigger some nightmares.

The plot in The Evil Within might not spark happiness in fans of the genre initially because the action starts off with a mass murder in a mental hospital, not necessarily the most original place to begin a horror game. Although, after you get passed the first chapter what you start to piece together in your mind can be thrown away immediately as in the second one nothing seems to make any sense and things get much weirder. By this time the game has your undivided attention.

The core mechanics of the game are similar to those in Resident Evil 4 and on top of them you get a new hiding system that you will be using a lot of in the game and the possibility to upgrade Sebastian’s abilities and weapons.

The Evil Within won’t necessarily reinvent the genre but it does seem to revive it to a true and honest form. The third-person perspective which is used throughout the game now adds so much more to the tension of every moment. Camera motion sways and reacts with subtlety to the movements of the main character, an effect that can best be seen when he’s severely wounded and trying to escape from a dangerous situation.

From an atmospheric point of view, The Evil Within is nearly flawless. Excellent lighting, great environment design and the audio effects make you experience with intensity every moment of the game.

Since you can’t have a horror game without some demons, possessed and tortured humans and a variety of ‘what in the hell is that thing!’ characters, The Evil Within won’t dissapoint. Right from the first encounter you get a severe dose of gore with a taste of how messed up and merciless your enemies are.

Trying to be a manly-man and opting to fist-fight spawns of evil will only leave limbless at best so you will have to rely a lot of the time on stealth attacks for quick kills. A wonderful thing about sneaking up on an enemy is that you constantly have the feeling that they will turn around just as you approach, and that in turn builds up a large dose of tension.

If you’ve been anxiously waiting for this game and you have set some fairly big expectations, tone it down a bit. The game is wonderful, there are no doubts about that but it does have a series of things which might seem unappealing. For example, the quality of some textures here and there might stab you in the eye with how bad they look.

On a closing note, The Evil Within is exactly how a good horror-survival game should be.You’re hooked into the action from minute one, in minute two you start running for your life and by minute ten you’ve probably died a couple of times. It’s definitely something you need to try.