The Evil Within Hands-on Preview
After being given a brief introduction to The Evil Within, which went by much too fast to actually understand anything, we were shuffled into a dark room with a sign warning us that entry would result in death.
It felt a little silly. The room was lit only by the monitors we would be playing from, as well as some of those fake flickering lights that look like candles. It was quite early in the morning and I wasn’t sure that this atmosphere would really work when I’d already had my first Red Bull of the day.
But I was surprised to see just how quickly I got absorbed into the game. It wasn’t instantaneous though, as the game started in black and white for some reason. I was a little off put by the events that led up to the mansion, but once the looming monolith of a home was in sight, The Evil Within started playing to its strength.
It’s not exactly the most original setting for the horror genre, an old creepy disused mansion; but then the reason it’s used so often is because it works so well. With some very powerful graphics the building stood up alone against the forest, ominously staring down at you from its darkened windows.
Once I got to the door, still feeling relatively confident about my chances, I strode inside expecting some kind of scare or fight to start straight away. The foyer was empty, which unnerved me a little, for a game that seemed to be playing by the rules, this was different. Now I’d have to go looking for the scares deeper in the mansion.
To finish the demo, we had been told ahead of time you had to unlock the large vault door that I was now staring at. Some visual cues suggested to me that there were three different buttons I would have to switch in order to open the door scattered through the mansion. I was growing more cautious, as the hallways became more and more claustrophobic, and I felt like Theseus navigating the labyrinth with my enchanted twine. That was until eventually I spotted a festering shadow in the next room.
The stealth mechanics of the game kicked in and I quickly attempted to get behind the monster, but I didn’t get very far. There was a trap on the wall, I could have avoided it, but still feeling confident I decided to disarm it and reap the rewards.
The explosion very nearly killed me. It also alerted the zombie-esque creature to my presence as he was now bearing down on me. My confidence wasn’t so much gone as disintegrated, and I fired my revolver over each of his shoulders before he closed in enough to finish me off.
‘Ok’, I thought ‘don’t try and disarm the traps.’
Maybe I was rushing as the tension started to build, but I found it very hard to perform a completely successful stealth kill. Every time I approached a creature from behind, they would begin to turn just as I got to them. Luckily I was still allowed to perform the kill, as melee combat itself counts for nothing.
It was an impressive trick to terrify the player, with reduced ammo, stealth kills should be taken whenever possible, but as you can’t kill a creature with melee combat, closing in on an enemy is a dangerous gamble. With these thoughts buzzing through my head I didn’t notice that the building had turned an odd blue hue, little did I know that this was the signal for the arrival of the Scary Coat Man.
He’s unkillable, something they did warn us about, but that didn’t stop me from trying. If you take nothing else away from this preview then take away this: don’t waste precious shotgun ammo on something that can’t die.
After wasting all my ammo I finally succumbed to the advice of the team and fled, well and truly terrified at his slow, steady march towards me. From then on I played the game extremely warily. Creeping through each room, carefully avoiding any traps that I came across.
Fighting enemies was the worst, knowing that noise might attract any more I hadn’t spotted. And for zombies, they moved pretty fast. The most demoralizing section of the demo came while I was exploring some of the mansions old bedrooms. Two room connected by a door similar to adjoining bedrooms in a hotel. Once they had been lived in, with faded bed sheets and cushions scattered about, but when moved to the second bedroom I heard a noise. A noise behind me.
It seems that two zombies had stumbled in after me, although they hadn’t been alerted to my presence yet. I was low on health and ammo, and to my surprise I was breathing heavily, the fear of impending doom was starting to really frighten me.
Maybe it was this nervousness that reminded to hide under the bed. Obviously, this little event had been scripted to get the player to do that, as shortly after I hid the zombies spilt up. But staring at their slow, shuffling feet drag past me was truly haunting. After catching my breathe and deciding I had to move, I crawled out and stealth killed both of them, although it was very close both times.
Once I finally got to one of the buttons needed to open the vault door, I discovered that this game would never really let up from its domination of the psyche. Rather than a mere button or switch, I had to implant a needle into a suspiciously live brain. Where it was placed was important, and dictated by an audio file that would play when we examined the brain.
It was uncomfortable, and unpleasant. By the time Scary Coat Man reappeared I was on the edge, nothing about this game was pleasant, there was no safe ground, no place you could go to recover and regroup. Suddenly the dark room I was playing in was terrifying.
A game that can scare you at 10am when you’re buzzing on Red Bull is a game to take seriously. When I finished the demo, after completing another two lobotomies and another puzzle I was drained and wanted nothing more than to curl up in a warm and well lit room. Although I walked out of the death room alive, I was scared, truly scared by the Evil Within, and that’s something becoming all too rare in the world of AAA horror titles.