The Evil Within Reviews
The Evil Within has all the elements of a great survival horror game. There’s a great story… eventually. There’s satisfying tactical combat… sometimes. The world looks suitably grim and foreboding… when it’s not breaking apart before your eyes. It’s a game that needed another twelve months to meet the developer’s vision. That’s what sequels are for. I can’t wholeheartedly recommend The Evil Within, but I can encourage you to keep an eye on the sequel. It could be something special.
The Evil Within is an enjoyable horror experience that ultimately suffers from lack of confidence. While it boasts many original moments of psychological suspense other sequences like the early village raid feel ripped straight from Resident Evil 4.
I like to look at [The Evil Within] as a meaningful love letter to pure survival-horror with gameplay that demands you to take your time and conserve your resources against aggressive foes in devilish settings. While a small portion of the design and features are rough, the majority of this game is a rock solid title sure of itself with a beautifully desolate world to explore and an insane story that's a fun albeit slow ride to watch unfold.
A game that fails to live up to it's hype, despite some good action.
A solid adventure and a music for horror fans out there who want to play a game which could be described as RE4's spiritual successor as mentioned earlier.
Check out our interview with Shinji Mikami to hear what he had to say about making Resident Evil and why he wanted it to be like beer.
The Evil Within's biggest sin is that it just isn't particularly scary.
The Evil Within feels like a the worst kind of throwback--one that feels stale, uninspired and most disappointingly, boring.
It's not Mikami's best game, but The Evil Within's excellent gameplay, incredible atmosphere, and the sheer variety of enemies and environments on display make up for occasional frustrations, a overly grimdark plot, and pointless stealth sections. It's a great game, and a return to form for Mikami. It's not Resident Evil 4, but you know what? There's nothing wrong with that.
While The Evil Within won't make as big of an impact on the medium of video games as its spiritual predecessor, there's a few design choices that hold the experience back and the story is more on the side of "what the hell" than offering a satisfying tale, it's still a great game for a trip back to that atmospheric, tense, semi old-school horror that manages to stand out in this current age, because big budget action horrors aren't created anymore and no one creates an action horror like the father of the genre, Shinji Mikami.
There's little of that symbiosis here, as The Evil Within's more serious tone and greater reliance on non-interactive cutscenes leaves the player disengaged from the rollercoaster of action.
The long awaited next survival horror experience from the creator of the iconic Resident Evil series is here with The Evil Within from the mind of Shinji Mikami
When you actually think about it, was "Resident Evil" really ever about the story? Was Wesker a well developed villain? That series has always been gameplay over narrative. "The Evil Within" continues that trend. "Resident Evil" has been on the decline for the last decade, but "The Evil Within" can be its honorary resurgence.
As a horror experience, The Evil Within completely misfired.
At its best, The Evil Within offers a few scares and decent, if bland and predictable, combat; at its worst, it's unoriginal, uninspired and plodding. If you're looking for something scarier, try playing through two other recent current-gen horror games, P.T. or Outlast. Heck, I'm betting my nephew's skeleton costume this year will be spookier.
Over the course of the lengthy, ill-paced campaign, one thing really stuck out for The Evil Within. It's not really a horror game. Yes, there are areas where you are often subjected to intense imagery and situations but they are more shocking than anything else. To put it simply, the game is more like the Saw film franchise than what we have come to expect from a good survival horror game.
Shinji Mikami returns to the genre that defined him, but the result is a jumbled mess of ideas that never quite come together.
At the end of the day, The Evil Within is a good Resident Evil game from 2005, but a below average third-person action adventure game in 2014. Silly design choices and just plain awful decisions manage to hold back what could be a fantastic experience.
The Evil Within is by no means a perfect game. The give-and-take of this love affair with the olden days is sacrificing Resident Evil 4's perfect level design, weapon choices, and tension for The Evil Within's better graphics, a better story, and more streamlined, modern controls. It's a balancing act that still sees Resident Evil 4 coming out way on top. There's no shame in coming up short on one of the greatest games ever made though. Mikami does his inspiration justice with this game, and any fan of his from the peak of his career can't go wrong with The Evil Within.