Review #293: The Evil Within

 Survival Horror is(was) back. Kinda.

 Shinji Mikami's at it again, after the action-shooter Shadows of the Dead, he decided to go back to Survival Horror. Kinda. I'm not gonna beat around the bush, this is what Survival Horror is in modern gaming, for reference, it's a little bit more Survival-y and a little bit less Action-y than Resident Evil 4.

 The game follows Sebastian Castellanos, a detective, who after answering a call for help, arrives, alongside his partner Joseph(whom I like to call Broseph) and rookie cop Juli Kidman, to a hospital where everyone's been killed. Things soon turn to worse, as the world comes crashing down, and Sebastian keeps getting thrust into different places and maybe... eras? There's an explanation as to why everything, from locations to weapons, seem to come from an anachronistic stew and why there's ammunition everywhere, but I'd rather let the game explain it. As for your teammates, you'll get to interact with Broseph a whole lot, and I grew rather fond of, while Juli is just there to be rescued a couple of times and then disappear.... which is probably why she had two DLC starring her. Mind you, the DLCs explain a couple of things that go unexplained in the main game, which is just no cool at all. Still, I found the game to be perfectly enjoyable by itself.

 The more I played the more I thought 'THIS is, probably, what Mikami wanted to do when he made Resident Evil 4'. The game plays from a third-person perspective, but interestingly, aiming turns it into a quasi-first person camera. It's an interesting approach, and one that works very well, I'd say it's even better than REvil 4. As a matter of fact, Sebastian can move while aiming, so suck on that Leon. There's also stealth in the game, which works rather well and is a must if you want to conserve Ammo, and boy, do you want to conserve ammo. While in REvil 4 ammo would drop pretty frequently, and usually ammo pertaining to the weapon you are using, ammo is very scarce in the game, particularly in the first few chapters. It's not unusual to run out of ammo for your preferred weapons, although I'll admit that I was never left completely defenseless. Another thing to note, is that the ammo you can carry is limited as well. Oh, and enemies hate staying dead, there's only two ways to know for sure that they won't get back up again: Either if they drop something(Ammo, Green Gel, etc) or by burning them by using matches.

 Green Gel is a currency that you can use in the Safe Houses to upgrade Sebastian. You can upgrade things like: Stamina(For sprinting), health, effectiveness of healing items, how much ammo you can carry as well as your weapons. Green Gel is not all that rare,  but you'll want to think carefully about what you want to upgrade. If you ask me, invest on how much ammo you can carry for the revolver and shotgun, as well as how many Syrenges you can carry first. There's also a ton of traps on every level, and their use is twofold. You can disarm them and convert them into ammo for the crossbow, which is what I did, or use them against your enemies! Frankly, I was pretty adept at pistol headshots, and I cared too much about ammo, so I just disarmed every single trap I saw.

 The game is divided into 15 chapters, and each chapter takes place in a different location. There's no backtracking, and puzzles are rather few. Most of the time is about going forward, rather than staying on the same place for too much time. There's exceptions, like the fantastic level based on Resident Evil's mansion, in which you must find stuff to activate stuff and solve puzzles in order to progress. Still, while there're more survival horror elements than say Resident Evil 4, the focus is still on action. Sure, sometimes it's better to avoid enemies rather than waste bullets, and sure, there are a few puzzles here and there, but shooting your way through is always a viable option. As far as difficulty goes, I thought it was just fine. I played on Normal(Survival) and accumulated 83 deaths, but I didn't think it was too tough, besides a couple of cheap deaths and instakills. Yes, there's a ton of stuff, mostly bosses or boss-like enemies that have instakill attacks, and they are not fun, not fun at all. While there are very few 'Safe Houses' to save your game, there's a moderate amount of checkpoints as well, although the placement isn't the... kindest. If you die, get ready to replay some rather tough sections every now and then, but hey, you'll do better upon continuing, since now you'll know what's coming! Anyways, back to the difficulty setting, I thought Survival was just fine, but apparently a lot of people thought the game was rather hard even on its easier difficulty, so a new patch has actually made 'Easy', well, easier.

 Something that annoyed a lot of people, although I didn't care for it, was that the entire game is played on letter box mode(Meaning, black bars above and below the screen). Supposedly it was done for cinematic effect, but... I didn't mind it. I got into the game every time I played, so I honestly never even noticed them. That said, supposedly the new patch allows you to turn them off, but then again, I don't usually download patches. What I did notice however, was that on a few, select occasions, the camera gets a bit too close to Sebastian's back. It happens only in places where there're no enemies, but as someone who likes to explore for items, it annoyed me a few times, since I wanted to see more of my surroundings. There's tons of texture pop-in as well, both in cutscenes and in gameplay, which is impossible not to notice. Once again, it didn't affect me in any way, but from what I've heard, it annoys a few. Lastly, loading times are a bit too long. About 10 seconds(Which sounds like little, but trust me, it's a lot) when loading a chapter it doesn't matter, since its the only loading screen you'll see in a chapter.... but if you die, you'll have to go through it again. And as I mentioned previously, there's a couple of very cheap deaths that you can't see coming(Or have little time to react), as well as finding out firsthand which enemies can instakill you and how, so... get ready to wait. A lot.

 I loved The Evil Within, it's a fantastic game. While I wouldn't call it a 'return' to Survival Horror, I'd call it more like a... 'rebirth'. Unlike games from the past, it's not about encumbering the player with stiff controls and movement, rather, control is excellent, aiming is simple and what not, so the difficulty is not 'artificial' so to speak. You have to make the most of what you are given, because ammo and healing items are scarce. That means knowing when to fight and when to run, and how to fight. Maybe you'd rather waste a match instead of bullets, so hit'em in the knees and burn them, Even better, run around, group'em together and blast their knees with a shotgun shell, and then burn them all together with a single match. Because of that, even people who were turned off by REvil 4 might want to give it a try. While the game plays very similarly, this game has a lot more survival horror elements to it.
 9.5 out of 10