GAME REVIEW: The Evil Within

The time comes again that I get to dabble in the wonderful world of survival horror and scream in the privacy of my own living room. From Bethesda Softworks and Tango Gameworks comes The Evil Within, a tale of tracking down a mysterious and sometimes invisible killer.

Directed by Shinji Mikami, who’s famous for creating the Resident Evil series, the story follows Sebastian Castellanos, a detective who races to Beacon Mental Hospital to investigate the scene of a grisly mass murder only to find footage of his team of officers being murdered by a person he is unable to see.

The game is tense from the get-go. The thing I enjoy is that it doesn’t rely on jump scares, but a sturdy foundation of things you can already see and hear. You’re going to be scared and on edge, but it’s up to you if you get caught. It offers a lot of settings, and uses them well. When Castellanos walks in the hospital, there are bodies everywhere, and not just lying in the same positions with the same smattering of blood. Each body tells a horrific story of death and misfortune as it’s twisted into terrible angles and carelessly tossed aside another corpse that tells a different yet equally excruciating story. The woods seem overwhelmingly against you with the howls of wind and the presence of a suffocating darkness. The enemies become gradually less human and more awful as you progress. The ammunition is sparse, so you’re forced to hoard shotgun shells and rely on melee and fire kills. This aspect forces the “survival” part of the genre.

Even though it’s mostly tension and anxiety that I feel, I’m also frustrated. The game’s mechanics aren’t perfect, and at times they feel choppy and unreliable. The save system is a real mystery as well, because I can’t find any rhyme or reason as to why it appears some moments and not others. While I appreciate the increasingly challenging bosses, some of them are so irritating. I’m spending most of my time crouched, moving at a pitifully slow pace to use my stealth attack to conserve bullets only to see that some of my shots don’t land on the big guy. It took me out of the game every once in a while, and the power of the rage quit took over. The story isn’t perfect, and characters come and go, and besides Castellanos and mentally ill Leslie, I can’t remember anyone’s names. It makes a serious effort, however, and after playing the plotless Destiny, I can appreciate that.

Overall, I enjoy the game. I don’t mind the repetition of “finding the loot then take on the boss,” because the setting is rarely the same. The details are magnificent and your heart will race at every turn. Even when you’re safe at home base, it’s unnerving to feel relaxed in a mental hospital crawling with beetles and bloodied wheelchairs.

The game was released for PC, Playstation and Xbox on October 14th. Get a glimpse of the horror in action below.

If you enjoyed Carly’s review, you can find the rest of her work right HERE on Sci-Fi Bloggers. You can also follow her on Twitter @MrsCarlyRodgers.

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