The Evil Within: Yay or Nay?

[Toblo1]

I really don't know. Personally, I say Yay, but that's mainly because I get scared easily.

The game seems all over the place, really. I've watched people who've enjoyed the game, but then I've seen people who have a burning hatred against it for some reason (Jesse Cox/OMFGcata called it worse than Ride To Hell. For some reason.....). Given that I'm easily scared, I may just watch someone LP it instead of buying it.

 

[White Lightning]

From what I've played it's got the survival elements down, but it's lacking in the horror department. Although I'm enjoying it so far. I will say that now that I've got the Agony Bow it's starting to get a little too easy, even on the harder setting. Hopefully it steps up later on, and it better actually get.. y'know... scary.

 

[Casual Shinji]

He did it with Resident Evil 2 and he did it with Resident Evil 4, thereby creating two of the best entries in the franchise. Sure he didn't make them alone, but he was the one who decided that things weren't running correctly and to find a way of getting it back on track.

Wasn't RE2 directed by Hideki Kamiya? Mikami was only the producer I believe. Anyways, some elements of Evil Within actually reminded me a lot of the 'hookman' version of RE4. Also Mikami created Tango gameworks just to be an independent developer and give a new generation of designers a chance, so Evil Within is the game he wanted make. If all he wanted was to just 'collect a paycheck' he could've just stayed with Capcom and be perpetually tied to Resident Evil.

Kamiya directed it, but Mikami was still the overseer that about 80% in decided the game wasn't fun to play.

It's funny you should mention the Hookman demo, because that footage looked better graphically and aesthetically, and looked all around scarier than anything in The Evil Within. If this is the game he wanted to make then I weep for the future.

 

[stroopwafel]

It's funny you should mention the Hookman demo, because that footage looked better graphically and aesthetically, and looked all around scarier than anything in The Evil Within. If this is the game he wanted to make then I weep for the future.

Has any game ever been 'scary' though? Tense sure, but scary idk. Mostly when they design a game solely around being 'scary' it becomes a drag to play. For me a (survival)horror game is about that sweet spot between tension, vulnerability as a player and still maintaing satisfying gameplay. Very few games get that right as they either fall on the side of being tedious snorefests with bouts of frustration(eg Outlast, Alien Isolation) or just become straight up shooters(eg. FEAR). I mean, the only reason we ever got the pre-rendered/fixed camera angle Resident Evils was b/c of technical limitations. When those limitations disappeared finding that balance between tension/release became way more difficult. Gameplay trumps everything in my opinion so if a game doesn't atleast have a satisfying core my interest start to dissipate quickly as no game can rely on atmosphere/story alone. Silent Hill 2 being the exception to the rule.

 

[asdfen]

Dead Space (original) had very nice scare along with gameplay and gore. I am not a big fan of Silent Hills as some of them I just find disgusting and disturbing instead of scary. Resident Evil had just the right combination of gameplay and interesting setting at least for most of part. This game I cannot get into but I can see that some would like it.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Has any game ever been 'scary' though? Tense sure, but scary idk. Mostly when they design a game solely around being 'scary' it becomes a drag to play. For me a (survival)horror game is about that sweet spot between tension, vulnerability as a player and still maintaing satisfying gameplay. Very few games get that right as they either fall on the side of being tedious snorefests with bouts of frustration(eg Outlast, Alien Isolation) or just become straight up shooters(eg. FEAR). I mean, the only reason we ever got the pre-rendered/fixed camera angle Resident Evils was b/c of technical limitations. When those limitations disappeared finding that balance between tension/release became way more difficult. Gameplay trumps everything in my opinion so if a game doesn't atleast have a satisfying core my interest start to dissipate quickly as no game can rely on atmosphere/story alone. Silent Hill 2 being the exception to the rule.

As I said earlier, fear is subjective. For example I found the P.T. demo scary as all mighty fuck, while someone else will just see a bunch of slow walking through a hallway.

I'm not claiming others couldn't find The Evil Within scary, but all I see is rehashed monster designs and horror aesthetics from the late 90's. Aesthetics Silent Hill 1 did way, way better. Now from the trailer footage I had already figured the game was probably not going to be scary, and the first gameplay area made it clear that this was indeed the case, but I still expected to get at least a solid action thriller. And that's just not what I got at all.

Despite the resurging popularity of horror games the genre seems to be in a more problematic state than it ever was. It either has to be about unstoppable stalkers, because being completely physically inept is apparently scary, or about psych wards covered in loads and loads of gore. Or both.

 

[Benpasko]

Despite the resurging popularity of horror games the genre seems to be in a more problematic state than it ever was. It either has to be about unstoppable stalkers

I hate this trend. In Alien: Isolation, you have a goddamn gun, but the bullets just bounce off the alien. Just ignore all the hundreds of aliens they shot to death in Aliens, including a few with a SMALLER handgun. Unstoppable stalkers tend to be way more tedious than scary for me, because it works out to 'run in the pre-made kiting loop for this area, then hide under a bed / in a locker.'
The only games of the unstoppable stalker genre that really pulled it off for me were RE3 (idgaf if you've beaten Amnesia or Outlast, try handling fucking Nemesis. That guy is in a class of his own, when it comes to 'oppressive threats'), and the Penumbra games, and in both of those examples you actually CAN stop or delay the stalker.

 

[Casual Shinji]

Despite the resurging popularity of horror games the genre seems to be in a more problematic state than it ever was. It either has to be about unstoppable stalkers

I hate this trend. In Alien: Isolation, you have a goddamn gun, but the bullets just bounce off the alien. Just ignore all the hundreds of aliens they shot to death in Aliens, including a few with a SMALLER handgun. Unstoppable stalkers tend to be way more tedious than scary for me, because it works out to 'run in the pre-made kiting loop for this area, then hide under a bed / in a locker.'
The only games of the unstoppable stalker genre that really pulled it off for me were RE3 (idgaf if you've beaten Amnesia or Outlast, try handling fucking Nemesis. That guy is in a class of his own, when it comes to 'oppressive threats'), and the Penumbra games, and in both of those examples you actually CAN stop or delay the stalker.

I haven't played Isolation, but for the Alien it does fit that it's practially unstoppable. I never did like how in Aliens apparently you could just mow them down as long as you had enough fire power. I guess Isolation is trying to channel the original movie, but there it was implied that what made it "unstoppable" was the fact that it was unkowable -- A creature beyond human understanding. And within the setting of that first movie this works, but after years of exposure it's hard to pull off as well now, and certainly not in an action driven game.

I don't mind enemies or stalkers that will quickly overwhelm me when given the chance, but the game needs to give me some sort of edge how ever little it may be. Don't just cut off any ability to fight back and call it fear.

 

[silver wolf009]

Despite the resurging popularity of horror games the genre seems to be in a more problematic state than it ever was. It either has to be about unstoppable stalkers

I hate this trend. In Alien: Isolation, you have a goddamn gun, but the bullets just bounce off the alien. Just ignore all the hundreds of aliens they shot to death in Aliens, including a few with a SMALLER handgun. Unstoppable stalkers tend to be way more tedious than scary for me, because it works out to 'run in the pre-made kiting loop for this area, then hide under a bed / in a locker.'
The only games of the unstoppable stalker genre that really pulled it off for me were RE3 (idgaf if you've beaten Amnesia or Outlast, try handling fucking Nemesis. That guy is in a class of his own, when it comes to 'oppressive threats'), and the Penumbra games, and in both of those examples you actually CAN stop or delay the stalker.

Well the guns in other Aliens games were using 9mm armor piercing rounds. Far as I'm aware, the guns in Isolation are pocketed from on station security, firing hollow point for unarmored targets. That exoskeleton's not just for show.

But yes, unstoppable stalkers can get tedious, especially when the game does it wrong, and you end up having to shake your ass out in front of them to aggro and kite them away from where you need to go, which I remember happening a few times for me in Isolation.

Honestly though, the best horror game I've ever seen is The Hidden. How do you make multiplayer scary? You leave it up to the players to scare one another.

 

[Benpasko]

I haven't played Isolation, but for the Alien it does fit that it's practially unstoppable. I never did like how in Aliens apparently you could just mow them down as long as you had enough fire power. I guess Isolation is trying to channel the original movie, but there it was implied that what made it "unstoppable" was the fact that it was unkowable -- A creature beyond human understanding. And within the setting of that first movie this works, but after years of exposure it's hard to pull off as well now, and certainly not in an action driven game.

I don't mind enemies or stalkers that will quickly overwhelm me when given the chance, but the game needs to give me some sort of edge how ever little it may be. Don't just cut off any ability to fight back and call it fear.

It's just a really weird design decision. If they just wanted to make the Alien invincible, why would they give you a gun? Guns are PROVEN to stop Aliens, and it just doesn't work for no reason. (EDIT: Above poster stated that it's a difference in ammo types, but that's still pretty weak reasoning imo. Hollow points can still easily punch through an exoskeleton like that) The bullets just bounce off. I'd say the bullets bouncing off DEVALUES the threat, because instead of desperately trying to fight back against a nimble otherworldly hunter, it's Colonial Marines with bullet damage turned off. I've watched footage where the Alien just walks on two legs directly into an oncoming stream of bullets with nary a fuck to give. And that's not very Xenomorph-y, dawg.

And it's double-confusing given that Aliens have a scary way of hurting you for shooting them, that would make for a great horror game tradeoff. They should have had it spray you with acid blood if you were close at all, and then run away to recuperate or something, rather than just take the gun option arbitrarily off the table. I like self-induced horror, where the game gives you enough rope to hang yourself, and the Alien franchise built that in as a series trope. I think this game would be stronger for it.

 

[RavingSturm]

Yay and nay both for me. Yay:No competing product on the market right now where demons with objects for heads chase you around a dungeon. Nay:Game has a some tech issues that might be fixed going forward. On the PC the game has a weird habit of setting itself on CPU low priority.

 

[Sylph_14]

Yay - I've been enjoying it. It creeps me out just enough to still be enjoyable while not giving me an actual heart attack.

 

[RavingSturm]

There are tweaks available to make the game less painful to run but still the out of the box experience is one of the most wretched. The casual buyer wont know where to look to make the fixes. I had to use process lasso to get cpu usage under control, adjust the FOV, cache a different hdd(4gb for the textures) to make it playable. I was several hours deep into the game, but the stuttering and letter box view were giving me a headache so I checked the support forums.

Gamedesign-wise its made some pretty wonky choices imho. Headshots are supposed to kill but enemies get around this by wearing mask(ceramic/metal) or have two heads. There are just way too many insta-kills in this game that you dont see coming and you end up spending more time in the loading screen instead of playing the game. The game doesnt communicate what you need to do very well. I'm not asking for scripted camera sequences that point to a switch or glowing orbs but I felt I was powering thru the game rather than thinking carefully. Also what's up with walking speed in this game? The characters dont move like normal people. They amble or stumble about like drunks. You'd think that the police dept would have some sort of basic physical requirement for its personnel. Your partners are 2 pencil necked non-field type people. The female detective is even wearing heels! The guy with glasses only becomes useful when he gets an axe and even then he's pretty clumsy swinging it around.

The match mechanic seems kinda forced. You can't stomp your enemies to death and melee weapons like the hatchet are single use only thus needing you to conserve matches at the beginning.

Story-wise, its nothing you havent seen before. It mostly a variation of RE/Silent Hill/Hellraiser.

I'm still playing it, currently on Chapter 11. I'd like it more if it was less rough around the edges, especially the tech situation.

 

[Sithmorack]

I'll go ahead and throw in my two cents. I've beaten the game and found as you progressed it got less and less scary. I think it really lost its edge after about... the third boss per say? Let me think... Chainsaw guy... Hairy One... Boxhead (just basically pyramid head with a box.) I'd say those are the three bossed you see on repeat.

Basically it made a couple scary bosses that weren't creative in my opinion but were definately a threat. I think the only one that really creeped me out was the creepy naked grudge lady with 6 arms. That's the main thing that annoys me about this game is that it re-uses bosses.

I like ammo conservation in horror games. It's a good mechanic and used right it can make the experience more stressful. However, when I'm at a boss and I'm completely out of ammo because the game just FORCED me to go through a firefight I get a little ticked off. I'm just punching the bastards at some points.

Don't even get me started on the sneaking mechanic. The sneaking mechanic can be used like... 1 to 3 times in the game where its actually useful. All the other times its quicker, easier, and more affective to shoot and kill everything with bullets.

The story seems like it didn't have much thoughtin put into it. You get bits in pieces but even the ending is like what the fuck is happening? The fact that you're basically in a "dream state" means you get teleported around randomly at a moments notice. You never really know whats going on. Which is good in some games, but this one its like "really? Did that really just happen?"

The last bad point I'll bring up are all the fucking insta kill traps and enemies. There are so many insta kill traps and enemies. So fucking many. I died left and right not because I was scared, low on ammo, or just slowly losing health. But because I'd just be minding my own fucking business and all of a sudden I'd just be fucking dead. Then I'd just facepalm and slowly shake my head.

But the overall atmosphere and some of the enemies are disturbing if not RE4esque. I did enjoy the game and some of the scares. The weapons you use and the rewards you get to go back through the game are again RE4esque.

It's not that long of a game and the final boss is fucking ridiculous. But I'd probably give it a 7/10. I'm being a bit generous but whatever.

Anyways, that was just my personal opinion.

 

[The Rogue Wolf]

I've been watching Markiplier's playthrough of it, and while it's entertaining to watch him play it, from what I've seen: Nay, definitely. The game can't make up its mind if it wants to crib from RE4, Silent Hill or Assassin's Creed, and as Yahtzee said in his review, the result looks like they dropped a distinct sequence of events on the floor, picked them up, and just said "screw it" and jammed them back together randomly.

Maybe a $15 sale on Steam. Maybe. And if so, read up on how to modify it so that it actually looks like something that was meant to run on a PC.

 

[Leoofmoon]

If you like really old resident evil yeah go ahead, it IS a copy of old resident evil, horrible controls and non since story and so many bugs you feel you need a exterminator before you play.