While not flawless, The Evil Within is a thoroughly enjoyable survival horror game. Personally, I found the story and writing to be engaging (although, I do not intend to imply that it's anything particularly special), mainly as a result of the game's gritty and morbid world/setting. Because of this, I found the pacing and length of the game to be appropriate. This aspect surprised me considering I clocked in roughly ~13 hours to complete my playthrough of it (excluding the DLC's). With games in the same genre, I found I enjoyed the shorter length. As a result, my lack of distaste for it's length surprises me somewhat. The combat and enemy design feels for the most part, good. I must admit I'm particularity fond of matches and the crossbow (and traps as a result). You can exploit enemy weaknesses and I found myself using most of my arsenal throughout the game. However, the Evil Within drops the ball at some segments, most of which are boss fights. Many fights have conditions, that if met, get you killed instantly, which can result in some deaths feeling undeserved. The other segments can be honestly summed up as just mildly frustrating encounters.

To summarize, the Evil Within is a solid survival horror game. While it absolutely doesn't reach the heights of other classics in the genre (such as RE4) due to some design problems here and there, it still lands in a good spot for me.

Me ha gustado mucho para no ser un juego tan bueno.

Hace muchas cosas distintas... y muchas no las hace bien. Es feillo. Pero tiene encanto.

Eso sí, al que diseñó a alguno de los bosses es para pegarle con un palo

Holeeee shiiit...So I was ready to love this game but it just spat in my face and smashed my face in beautiful setpieces.

I'm fine with the last part, though.

I'm happy owner of the Art Book which was totally worth it's money! The body horror is actually quite creative and I love seeing how some monsters evolved over time and others got dropped (or put in the DLC later).

This is no Silent Hill, even if it looks like one sometimes. It's more akin to Resident Evil and I say that as someone who not a fan of the franchise but gets why people like it. RE leans into the story it tells: is it goofy as hell? Well yeah, but we know that and will treat it as such! Is it pure horror that only wants to terrify you and make you feel small and helpless? Well, then we're going to lean into that!

Ew doesn't really do that. At least, not for me. The story is bananas but it tries so desperately to be taken seriously that it gets annoying fast. It promises complexity, where is only simplicity. If I would retell what happens in the game, I would be finished quite fast. If I put in every story information in that the game throws at you then it might get more complex but that doesn't mean it gets good...just irritating.

I never really liked the protag and had too much fun making fun of him and his definitely ex-boyfriend Jojo. I have also too much to call the short bit where you play him "Jojo's Bizarre Adventure" but that's not only interesting for the shitty humour faction of this site, I'm afraid. :(
Anyway, the protag guy had a drinking problem and I don't know if he was purposefully that dumb or if it was just the plot needing him to be like that.

There is also a lady cop who doesn't do much because this is what the DLC was for...yay. We have to save her.
SO be fair, we also have to safe Jojo.
!Equality!

Having to chase another character through the whole game was also not that great of a move because at one point it would have made more sense to just let the guy go and LEAVE. Honestly, bitch survived fine without me...! I'm sure the only reason he was in danger was because I was near...!

I also don't like the "mentally unstable, childlike character with secret knowledge that gets used as a plot device" shit that esp. horror games like to pull. Oh well.

The gameplay is clunky and sometimes quite unfair and the occasional horror that came up was either thanks to my lack of ammo of because the body horror was taken to an extreme again. Not a good one.

This game is also responsible for my severe dislike of black haired dead women. You have to fight her quite often and the fights are annoying. Not creepy.

There are some scenes that are quite beautiful and the lighting is also really, really effective. I love the OST! I liked some of the places I walked through or some small scenes that happened but didn't do much storywise.

The Nurse also doesn't make sense. Had the feeling she was there for the people who were into nurses. :/ Thats fine. Could have been weirder.

Played a little over ten hours of this, getting to about the half-way point on the normal difficulty. As far as I can see it, all this game has going for it is a strong aesthetic based in convolution that feels present in the pacing, even in the movement of motifs between visual and plot elements. Without knowing any of the details behind it, the tech and presentation is also really damn impressive. The environments are sometimes very beautiful. But other than that I think it is a boring, sometimes frustrating game to play. I am confused as to what it was designed to make me a player feel, because all aspects of how it plays seem non-complimentary and totally out of tune. The combat is not satisfying because you never can tell how much damage you have dealt to an enemy unless their head explodes since they hardly react to anything, taking bullets to the head like it was nothing at all, which is a huge ding against it coming from the director of RE4. The tension stemming from the low resources could have been cool with different balancing, but this is clearly an action game with large amounts of bullet-sponge enemies with pretty much no other alternatives to fight with. It gestures at having phases for styles of play, moving from stealth to outright combat, but stealth is just a way to reduce enemies before you have to fight them and that often takes way longer to do than simply shooting enemies in the head. The pacing is interesting but only because it makes it hard for you to predict what comes next, which has the negative effect of destroying any modulation of tension created by understanding or potentially misunderstanding your position, your dis/advantage, your progress in a chapter or the over all drama. This game is truly a mess and unfortunately it is barely even an interesting mess.

Game analysis is a lot more complicated than explaining why you liked or disliked each part of a game. It’s important to be cognizant of biases and expectations, while still recognizing the importance of the reference points that influenced the game’s development. The Evil Within is a great example of how difficult this can be, with the marketing campaign leaning heavily on the fact that Shinji Mikami was the director. If everyone is told that there’s a new horror third-person shooter from the creator of Resident Evil 4, the implicit understanding is it's going to be a spiritual successor. This was an especially powerful strategy in 2014, only a couple years after Resident Evil 6 made fans lose hope they would ever get a worthy followup. With that context in mind, it’s easy to see how a good game that didn’t meet people’s expectations could still be seen as disappointing. This game isn’t the copy of Resident Evil 4 people may have wanted, but is instead a much more horror-focused game about breakneck action. The over-the-top style is no longer a slow boil that takes place over the entire game, it’s an explosive love letter to the horror genre from the word go, starting in a mental hospital, evolving into a nightmarish butcher shop, which dumps you into a spooky town in the woods, all within the course of an hour. The gun battling is less methodical, instead asking you to quickly swap between all your tools with efficiency. This includes a larger suite of weapons, traps, stealth, and ammo types you need to juggle and master if you don’t want to be overwhelmed. If you play this game in the survival-horror way the marketing suggested, it will seem like a mess, but when played with the action sensibilities the mechanics actually promote, it’s a great experience. I wouldn’t blame people for wanting something more typical of the genre or something with a better story, but if you’re in the market for some frantic action, this is hard to beat.