Wow uh…this was bad

Continuing my previous horror game binge The Evil Within was a game I missed playing out on during the previous generation, of course I wanted to play it now because of my aforementioned binge but what I wasn’t aware that this was made by RE director Shinji Mikami, which peaked my interest of this game even further than it already was. I honestly had no idea what to expect, but it certainly wasn’t this

The Evil Within is a trainwreck, an amalgamation of generic horror themes and setpieces strung together with a plot that’s made of silly string and hoisted on a pedestal made entirely of jenga blocks. The story just sort of…happens. The main gist is that you’re traveling through the mind of a demented mental patient who can change the fabric of reality within his subconscious basically any time he wants, so the plot frequently jumps and leaps all over the place to set pieces that are horror themed (spooky forest, haunted mansion, evil hospital, a run down church and the catacombs of said church, the sewers, being chased through a laboratory by a chainsaw wielding maniac with a mask on his face) in the most generic ways imaginable, like they hit just about every single horror location trope and cliche in the book they could possibly hit and it really doesn’t amount to anything. Because the plot jumps as often as it does and because locations change so frequently nothing really has a chance to sink in and there’s no telling how close you are to achieving closure to the goal you’re trying to achieve or if there’s an end anywhere in sight. The characters you play as and with are so forgettable and bland that I kept completely forgetting their names until the cast brought them up in conversation. There is an underlying storyline about how the main character had a tragic backstory involving his daughter but it’s all flavor text and it has zero impact on the main narrative. It reminds me of Isaac trying to find his girlfriend in the first Dead Space except that was WAY more ingrained with the main story than this. There are some creative visual elements but they’re few and far between.

Gameplay is something else though, it’s a standard 3rd person shooter but just made infinitely worse. The camera is positioned so awkwardly that often times it’s hard to see anything in front of you when you’re sneaking around anywhere, and while aiming the camera is zoomed so far in that every single weapon feels hideously inaccurate to wield no matter much you upgrade the “accuracy” statistic. Often times I’ve had the camera get stuck in walls or just spaz out completely leading me to get dogpiled while the only thing I could do is to just sit there and take it. There are some interesting mechanics in relation to the combat, you can time burning a corpse to where you can burn multiple enemies at once, even if they’re standing up and uh…no actually wait that’s about it. You can melee attack enemies but the attacks are so pathetic in damage that even when I maxed out damage for melee attacks they still did next to nothing to anything I encountered, they were only useful when I could juke common fodder enemies and cheap potshot them with melee strikes before running a short distance out of range. The game also places traps everywhere throughout the game in some of the most despicable areas I’ve ever seen. You will absolutely NOT see them coming on your first playthrough, especially early on through the game, it’s so cheaply put together (a favorite moment of mine is when the game basically blows you up with a bomb for the first time and only then does it pop up the tutorial text for how to avoid and disarm a bomb, very cool). The game tries to be the whole “it’s an action game that thinks it’s a survival horror game”, so despite having ridiculous over the top enemy design and action setpieces with like 17 different mooks screaming and sprinting at you all at once and boss fights that take like 10,000 hits to finally kill (we’ll get to that), the game still has ammo scarcity which makes enemy encounters WAY more irritating than they already are. Speaking of which:

The enemies in this game are a sight to behold, they’re mostly typical zombies, usually with masks on, but these zombies can also…shoot firearms like guns and crossbows and operate doors with ease, it’s honestly somewhat hilarious. They’re so unimaginative and (gotta use the word once again) generic, and because of how often they throw zombies with guns at you the game ends up feeling like a generic cover shooter quite a bit. It’s super easy to get ganged up on seeing as how the crowd control elements are limited to scarce resources and there’s zero invincibility frames, meaning if you get hit by something and stumble down in a forced damage animation, you can still get combo’d to death while you’re completely helpless! Fun!!! The rest of the enemy encounters consist of mini bosses or full bosses and like…I…I don’t even know what to say, they’re AWFUL. They’re all gigantic bullet sponges that take an eternity to take down and pretty much every single one of them has an instakill attack, because of COURSE they do. I got so sick of seeing instakills throughout the entire game repeatedly, it’s not engaging or tense, it’s just infuriating, it’s not even a “skill issue” either because oftentimes I get hit even when I’m not even in the boss’s radius of attack thanks to wonky attack hitboxes and because Sebastian's sprint lasts as long as a 400 pound guy who indulges on nothing but McDonalds after trying to run a marathon. As an even bigger insult, the final boss of the game is a scripted snoozefest where you press a few buttons and kill it instantly, why was THAT not a challenge but everything else was? I don’t get it. The stealth element introduced is so tacked on it feels like an afterthought. You can sneak attack enemies to instant kill but rarely do you find an instance where an enemy is roaming around and isn’t instantly spotting and ambushing you, but their turning is so finicky it’s practically impossible to pull off the finisher consistently. The cherry on top of the cake is that these chapters are so LOOOOONG. Earlier chapters move at a relatively brisk pace but later chapters drag on for like 3 hours at a time and get more and more frustrating as the game goes on.

I don’t get The Evil Within. I don't think I was ever going to get it. It seemed somewhat interesting at first but the experience is so mind gruelingly miserable that I genuinely never want to play it again, it's an absolutely horrendous game. I’ve heard the sequel is way better so at least I have that to look forward to.

In the words of good ol Sebastion, ”Out of ammo??????”