i was basically gaslighted into playing this game since bioshock was the favorite series of a friend of mine so i was like why not just marathon it and after finishing that one this friend went umh ok actually so the evil within also is one of my favorite game ever so me being a people pleaser a i was like yes maam ,,,,,,, onto it

and here we are

now ive been looking for a horror game that could really make me want to tear my heart out due to the scary shit that happens but im still unable to find it so did the evil within make me shit my pants ??????? no !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! im so tired of people saying “horror game” when in reality its just an action game with horror aesthetic like youre telling me resident evil is scary as fuck and i completely lose interest in your argument (resident evil village has some haunting segments tho will give you that)

so yeah yet again i gotta say this game isnt a good “horror” game the atmosphere isnt the most claustrophobic or thick one and the focus on action elements make it really clear that the direction the game is gonna go its just an action game with some degree of horror elements and even there its more of a gore aesthetic than a horror one apart from some really specific enemies that are genuinely some really disgusting degree of body horror

so actually talking about the game itself the evil within is something that i wasnt expecting to like as much as i did im not a huge fan of these kinds of games unless theyre resident evil so when i also heard the director of this one is shinji mikami who famously also directed resident evil 4 i was sure this was gonna lend a lot of narrative and gameplay elements from that game for better or for worse and sure this did not reach the higher highs of re4 but its sure a good experience nonetheless

something that really struck me as interesting in this one is how much care was put into the themes and general aesthetic of the game to the point that even though youre gonna traverse a wide variety of environments (something that i really liked lets be real theres a hospital a cemetery a collapsing city a forest some sewers a castle a haunted house a laboratory theres some serious attention to detail in every single one of them) theres sure some sense of cohesion altogether and that really sold the game for me i was a huge fan of the cinematographic black bars during the game but after a while i genuinely needed a good amount of time to really use the limited amount of screen so whatever

that being said yeah im a huge fucking fan of this games entire art direction and while i think the characters are bland both in a character design standpoint and also a character development standpoint the enemies are really such a great fucking compromise and somehow get more and more similar to silent hill fiends than resident evil ones with all the body horror i told you about youre gonna feast your eyes on countless limbs lots of mucus and blood and a wide variety and definitely too much decomposed skin the zombies you find at the beginning are the the most safe designs since theyre sure gonna get freaky real quick like the multi hands black hair gal is a highlight and the box heads are really a statement of how much men with heavy metal on their heads are super hot and fuckable im looking at you pyramid head

the gamefllow is nice i was not a huge fan of the stealth elements since i usually suck at them but when you get in the meat of the gameplay which plays a lot like resident evil 4 its really interesting you get a lot of weapons and you can upgrade your stats and the weapons through the use of some loot you get all around and after defeating enemies now this is pretty interesting and again in general fucking these bitches up is always a treat but there were some points here and there in the game so tricky just for the point of being annoying like segments with a lot of traps ot scenes that will always result in a game over the first time you play them because you dont know what you have to do or some enemies that can oneshot you its not always a tranquil descent into madness i gotta say but its still fun to play i cant really lie to you some deaths are irritating but quite fun nonetheless

bosses are also pretty great which is something that i cant really say for many other action horror games sure they also have some weird gimmicks sometimes but its not too bad anyway and they got some bomb designs that final boss was such a treat i had so much fun

so apart from sebastian being kinda hot but this is not the right time to thirst on him since here hes kind of ugly but who wasnt in the ps3 times so yeah hes still an interesting protagonist doesnt have as much of a psychological insight as much as i wanted to even though the game allegedly dabbles into psychological territory but it was more of an external kind of psychological type of narrative than character study which is fine by me maybe the evil within 2 apart from making sebastian super hot and breedable (we are gonna get there in that games review) it will also give me some more insight into his person

that being said i still like what i see hes serious and funny and hes already done with the whole zombie apocalypse after 10 minutes from the beginning of the game and honestly ? can relate

last but not least the story SPOILER TERRITORY YALL

i was not a huge fan of the story in the beginning i knew it was gonna get into psychological type of horror but still the pacing was kind of slow and i was not that interested in the characters if im being honest kidman is barely there joseph is schizophrenic and confusing a character the doctor sucks as a person and as a narrative point and leslie is mentally ill what do you want me to say

ruvik was a weird case because one thing that i really hate in horror stuff is the superpowers it make the entire point of building tension and dread absolutely useless like i was getting invested in the story and this guy would just show up and do some star wars ass moves come on is this the best you can do now i understand he can do the stuff that he does because its all a simulation and hes like the god of the simulation but still if you just give some characters superpowers i already lost half the interest like what happened to physically overpowered monsters or psychologically haunting disorders you can do better

so yeah the entire premise was kind of shit for me but the more i went on the more i liked how the story unfolded they really gave it a nice twist and the entire realization that i was all a simulation in their minds retrospectively explains a lot of stuff that happens throughout the campaign so i really cannot complain about it and anyway i still had a good time all the way through so i guess i can excuse some kamehameha typa plotpoint

good shit i dont know if im gonna play the DLCs for this game but im definitely gonna check out the second game to get a piece of that castellanos ass in tight trousers