Disappointment is in the air, much like the bittersweet smell of delicious cookies who spent too long in the oven thus becoming overdone monstrosities. Then again, you like cookies right - I know I sure as hell do. So, do you know what you're going to do? You're going to take a bite out of that burnt to hell cookie, smile at the person who made them for you, attempt not to vomit, and then pretend you liked it. Who knows, you may even eat one or two more just for kicks later, cookies are cookies after all right?
I really could leave my review of The Evil Within with that paragraph, alas my verbose nature will not allow me to do so. Beware dear readers, that wafting smell of fresh sugar cookies being baked in the oven does indeed smell tantalizing - but the product...the product is something different all together.
There was so much promise to this title, allow me to explain. The Evil Within, while not a Resident Evil game, is a title that evolved from Shinji Mikami's long running series of survival-horror games. Not only that, it feels and plays much like my personal favorite title of the Resident Evil series, Resident Evil 4. This portion of the Resident Evil family tree is highly regarded as one of the best games to come out of the IP, I'm sure some will argue against that but it's hard to call RE4 a bad game. Is it scary? Maybe to some people, I was scared by the first Resident Evil - though I imagine only because graphics were so humble back then that my imagination fired up the fear engines for me. While definitely more action based that its predecessors, the game play was amazing.
Both The Evil Within and Resident Evil 4 boast a 3rd person camera hovering just behind the protagonist's shoulder, allowing for quick switches into aiming down the sights of your pistol at whatever monstrosity is lumbering your way. The game, while less about the scare, kept your heart rate up due to the visceral nature of the combat and the fact that bullets weren't just lying around everywhere - every bullet counts.
Now, Mr. Mikami has returned to the genre he helped define with his entry into the next generation of gaming - The Evil Within. Normally I would have information set aside about characters, setting, etc. - but honestly after completing 5 chapters of the game one would hope that you knew the main character's name...I do not, I know I've been told but I honestly just don't care. The protagonist reacts to gut-wrenching changes in reality, walking corpses, and demonic monstrosities bursting out of the dead like it's a damned trip to Baskin Robbins. Slight spoiler ahead (if you care).
At one point I had just gotten done wandering through a room literally waist deep with the blood and viscera of a myriad of slain people when a beast with multiple long clawed arms bursts out of a body and begins to chase me down a hall - his reaction? "What's your deal?" Really? What's your deal Mr. (or Miss) horrifically brutalized demon, why are you being such a meanie? How about a little, oh I dunno, screaming or even cursing whatever divine beings allowed such a creature to roam the Earth? Nope, not Mr. Protagonist - he seems completely cool even while said beast is smashing his head against the tiled floor until it pops open like a cantaloupe.
In all honesty, the game is beautiful. The artists had a ball and you can tell, the environments are absolutely amazing to just wander around in - if only all the shitty game play could be taken out. Don't expect much evolution from Resident Evil 4, in fact I can say that it takes a few GIANT steps backwards. Saving now requires you to enter some strange dimension through random ornate mirrors you find scattered about the destroyed ruins you wander, not only that you must enter "mirror land" (which is an empty psychiatric hospital, original!) in order to spend your upgrade points to make your protagonist more resilient to having his head torn off his body. Nothing like taking stupid amounts of time out of a game that is supposed to build suspense in order to find a stupid mirror to spend stupid points (I've been calling them brain points because as far as I can tell that's what they are, little weird green jars of brain fluid).
Granted I have not completed the game, though I doubt I will - and perhaps everything turns around and the game is amazing. I've read reviews ranging from a measly two stars on a five star scale to a shocking 9.0 on a 10 scale, so there are some out there who do in fact enjoy the title. I'm not going to attempt to explain the story because frankly I have no idea what the fuck is going on at any given moment in time - if this was meant to add to the atmosphere it did not go as planned. When a new chapter begins your guess is as good as mine as to where I'll end up, will I continue on the path I was on or be teleported to a strange new area with little to no explanation besides "things are weird"?
I get it, distorting reality and all that - it is a cool touch but only if you do it right *cough Eternal Darkness cough* and this most certainly does not. The strange effects are neat to see, but other than that they are just fluff - plus that and it's hard to be scared of things when I have a crossbow that literally shoots arrows that stick into your target and then emit jets of flame at different angles in order to fry entire crowds of the shambling dead. Its not scary when I can turn around and shoot off a one liner to my fiance before I blow someone in half with a shotgun - that is not survival horror.
Are there cool things about the game? Sure there are, am I glad to FINALLY see a protagonist take the undead seriously with the inclusion of collecting matches to burn the corpses of the foes you've slain...you know, just in case they come back? Hell yes I am, I love that touch, if I were fighting things that drift between the veil of life and death you can be damned sure I'm gonna douse the thing in gasoline and light it up faster than you can say "What the fuck was that thing?".
I could prattle on for ages, but here is what you can expect if the title still tugs on your curiosity as it did mine. You'll be running around through dilapidated villages, gore filled dungeons, and other mainstay settings for horror games dodging traps, setting traps, and shooting zombie things in the face when you have to. Though the gripes with this title are massive and you should consider pocketing that 60$ or maybe spending it on something actually scary - may I suggest Alien: Isolation? Or actually any of the other games coming out this month?
The experience boils down to a half baked 3rd person shooter that doesn't follow its own rules. Corpses on the ground are able to be burned by matches in order to prevent them from rising up at an inconvenient time, yet you'll wander into a room chock full of bodies, matches at the ready, and the game will not allow you to torch them because they have to get up and try to kill you in a scripted event soon. Boom, all hopes of scariness gone. When I'm standing in an empty room full of ammo and only one dead body on the floor that I for some reason cannot burn I can't help but shake my head. Oh dear, I wonder what's going to happen with that weird body, oh wait it got up / exploded / turned into a boss. Yawn. Yawn x100000. Thumbs down.
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