The Evil Within Review - Scary & Frustrating

The Evil Within can be summarised in one simple, yet terrifying sentence: it is the ungodly lovechild of Dark Souls and Silent Hill.

If you’re looking for a horror title that will make you regret playing with the lights off, The Evil Within will having you staring worriedly into the dark shadows of your bedroom. The dark places of the game hold almost indescribable terrors, and thanks to The Evil Within’s excellent graphics, you’ll be concerned with what might be hiding around your house each time you look away from the screen. The entire atmosphere of the game is by far the best, and most focused part.
Even if the location of the levels are a bit clichéd for a horror game (the standard affair of mental asylums, mansions and cursed villages) the execution is almost completely unbeatable. Every room, every corridor, every box is oozing with deliciously unpleasant detail.

From the earlier confusing encounters with the cannibal butcher, where the kitchen cellar is studded with detail to later adventures in darkened cellars where the eerily creaking wheelchairs will send a shiver up your spine, the set dressing is undeniably creepy. Every single level has this dark and looming air to it that makes the game so much more scary. Even after a while, when the initial shock of the enemies has faded, you’ll still be flinching at every scare. The Evil Within does a very good job of making the player feel almost completely claustrophobic, even in some of the bigger levels. Despite this oppressive feeling that the walls are closing in all around you, the Evil Within has some devilishly well hidden collectibles scattered around its dank levels. Most are hidden around the path you must travel, while like most horror games, you will be given the option of exploring other routes in search of supplies, but doing so risks what little you are carrying as well as your own mental well being.

 

Supplies are paramount in The Evil Within, so much that you’ll be despairing over every missed shot. This scarcity in ammo only adds to the already overwhelming difficulty, which will have the player dying in numerous unpleasant ways even on the easiest settings. The weapons have a good punch, and with visceral and meaningful combat, the gameplay is fun, but quite harsh. Playing the same section over and over again can become tedious, especially in the earlier levels where stealth is vital, and slow. Enemies cut through health extremely quickly and fleeing isn’t always an option. Later on in the game where you have more weapons at your disposal sneaking around becomes less important, though still useful for conserving precious ammo, because each enemy takes a few shots to kill at least.
Horror games shouldn’t be easy, but there is a line between terrifying challenge and annoying chore, which unfortunately The Evil Within crosses quite a lot. To make matters worse, the game also requires you to upgrade your character in order to hold a reasonable amount of ammo. So not only will you struggle to find enough ammo to kill the enemies, you’ll probably have to leave some behind too.

Upgrading your character is implemented in an interesting fashion. Given the somewhat fractured nature of the game, your central character will occasionally be transported to a secluded section of a hospital, complete with creepily cheery nurse. She’ll kindly strap you into a chair where you’ll inject yourself in the brain with new abilities (such as pockets, apparently). Unfortunately this is about the best part of the story, because the rest just doesn’t make sense. It’s a shame that such a well crafted game could fall down at such a crucial part. You play as Sebastian, a detective with literally no personality traits at all, even after you and your colleagues get sucked into the sinister world of The Evil Within, complete with screaming four armed mutant thing.

It breaks the tension when Sebastian doesn’t seem at all worried or concerned in the face of abject horror, even when his friends are in danger. Like so many other games, the story was obviously secondary to the gameplay and setting; it feels almost unfinished, like they’re piles of dialogue on the cutting floor of Sebastian, and the rest of the characters panicking. After being stabbed in the eye with a needle and waking up in a cannibals disgusting kitchen, Sebastian doesn’t care, or at least you couldn’t tell if he does. When he’s being chased by a chainsaw wielding maniac through a room of spinning blades, Sebastian seems somewhat annoyed. And when faced with completely invisible enemies Sebastian just sighs, like this is the same mundane routine for the life of a Krimson City detective.