Review #701: The Evil Within 2

 Silent Evils? Resident Hills? Either could've worked.

 I absolutely adored The Evil Within, because it was a perfect blend of what I liked about Resident Evil and Silent Hill, so expectations where high with The Evil Within 2. Well, while the first game was a bit polarizing depending on who you asked, most people seem to agree that the sequel is an improvement. I wouldn't exactly agree with that sentiment, but what we've got is a bonafide Survival Horror game that takes more elements from Silent Hill, namely the open-ended town, and merges them with the previous formula to great effect.

 A few years passed since TEW, and Sebastian Castellanos is drinking his sorrows away, but it's not too late when Kidman, on behalf of Mobius, contacts him: Lily, his long dead daughter, is actually alive and Mobius' guinea pig, who has lost herself inside the very same machine that put him through TEW's nightmare, being her father and what not, Mobius enlists Sebastian to rescue his daughter, and on his journey, deal with his own personal traumas and demons that have haunted him ever since he thought he failed to save his daughter. The story is much more personal this time around, which gives it a decidedly different flavor from the previous game. That said, the game is a cheese factory as far as the dialogue goes, most of it stemming from Mobius' own head chief, who gives us the reasons that Lily worked so well because she was an, ahem, 'innocent child', and later down the line ends a sentence with '...but oddly admirable', you'll know it when you hear it. All while recycling the same looped arm animation. It'd ridiculous, I found myself either laughing or cringing at most of the things he said. On the other hand, the final fourth of the game fell a bit too much into melodrama, to the point that it wasn't even feeling like a proper horror game anymore. People criticized how little Sebastian evolved during the previous game... but TEW's focus was never on its characters, but on the setting and how the horror came to be, in my opinion, all this new emotional baggage only gets in the way of the horror elements.

 As for the gameplay, it retains what made the first game so good: The third-person Resident Evil-like combat mechanics, with Silent Hill's psychological horror as well as stealth elements. The stealth has been polished and is now integral to your survival. Bullets are scarce, very scared, and your knife is nigh-useless, but stealth? Most enemies can be stealth killed in one hit, and a rare few take two stealth attacks to put down. Needless to say, your survival depends on how well you can lure enemies into your stealth kill's range. Luckily for you, cheesing enemies is very easy, as soon as you get the corner-kill skill, you can just make enemies chase you, cover behind a corner and murder them as they get close to you. I tend to hate stealth in games, and in The Evil Within 2 it felt almost mandatory, but I'll admit I had my fun slowly cheesing hordes of enemies into an early, bulletless death.

 While ammo is scarce, the shooting in the game feels fantastic. Holding R2 will put you into aiming mode, which almost turns into first person so that you can aim wherever you want to shoot. You can aim behind cover or while walking. There's a pretty decent amount of weapons, and even multiple types of guns and shotguns. Throughout STEM's Union City you can scavenge weapon parts which you can then use to upgrade your weaponry. You can also find gunpowder so that you can craft ammo for whichever weapon you prefer. Crafting should be done at workbenches, but you can do it while out and about.... which will cost more resources than while one a workbench, but it might get you out of a pinch.

 The game is divided into chapters, but much like Silent Hill, you'll be exploring Union City in between the major 'buildings' you'll explore. There are two major Union City locales, which reward your exploration with sidequests, resources or new weapons, so it's always in your best interest to explore as much as you can. There's a third major zone, albeit divided into sub-sections, the Marrow, which is a series of underground passages and labs, also offering its own detours. The new explorations elements work very well, if anything, the game feels like a souped up version of Silent Hill - Downpour. That said, I think the first game's linearity worked really well and paced the game in a more frantic rhythm that gave the game deliberate, thought-out ups and downs. Here you might come across a mini-boss and just run away into a safehouse to catch your bearings, or you may find yourself searching for scraps on the ground or sidequests to do, just because you can.

 Just as with the first game, most enemies drop Green Goo when defeated, which can then be used to enhance Sebastian. Yes, this means that you'll oftentimes find yourself hunting down every single zombie in order to become stronger. There are five branches you can upgrade Sebastian in: Health, Stamina, Combat, Stealth and Regeneration. As for me, I began mixing Stealth and Health upgrades, with a single adrenaline upgrade so that I could run for a longer time. After I got the best upgrades of both, I turned my eyes into Combat and Adrenaline, completely forgoing regeneration. Why bother? Most safe-houses have Coffee that you can drink for free and completely heal yourself. You have to wait a bit before you can drink again, but Sebastian's health automatically refills up to a certain threshold, so if you play your cards right you can abuse stealth and your regeneration to make your life easier. And upgrades will also do that for you, since Sebastian can become one tough cookie. Latter combat upgrades give you bullet-time, at the cost of stamina, or a free get-out-of-jail card in the form of a counter-attack if you get grabbed by an enemy. The corner-stealth kill is pretty useful too.

 I didn't have any major issue with the same, save for a well-document crash in chapter 13. If you die more than twice during a certain hot section the game will more than likely crash. I also read that a ton of people where having crashes during chapter 7, after burning 'the second picture', but it never happened to me.

 As a HUGE The Evil Within fan, I'm happy to say that the sequel is pretty darn great, however, unlike most critics, I felt it wasn't quite as good as the first game. All the new personal demons and drama takes away from the raw horror elements from the first game, and I feel that the new village/wax aesthetics aren't quite scary as the first game's more urban locales and barbed-wire/metallic-themed monsters. Mind you, it's still a great game, and it had its spooky moments, but I really liked the first game's pace and aesthetics and this game took a step back by letting Sebastian's personal life seep into the game's narrative without a scary twist or what have you. The cheesy dialogue didn't help. Regardless, there's absolutely no going wrong with this game, and I hope we'll get more sequels in the future.
 9.0 out of 10