Game #874: The Evil Within(Playstation 4)

 Slightly buggier than I remember... 

 The Evil Within is one of my favorite survival horror games of all time. Back when I played it, it felt like Resident Evil 4's real sequel, and I loved how it merged Resident Evil's gameplay with a more Silent Hill-ish brand of horror. On this second playthrough I'm willing to admit that they didn't quite nail SH's horror, but it's still really good.

 Since I was replaying this game, I opted for the easiest difficulty setting, and I think it was quite alright. Ammo is still a bit scarce, which will force you to juggle your weapons, but the game isn't overly hard. That said, I think that the game is a bit too nasty with bosses and their one-hit kills. Pretty much every big boss has at least one way of killing you if they touch you, which feels a bit unfair. The environment too is filled with traps, some that could kill you if they touch you, but they weren't too bad. The issue with one-hit kills is that the game must load again after you die, and sitting through loading screens is the worst punishment out there. Luckily, the game loads much, much faster on PS4 than on PS3, which made dying so much bit more palatable.

 The PS4 version looks pretty similar to the PS3 port, but it has an entirely different lightning system. Your mileage may vary on this, I saw some comparisons in Youtube, and I think I liked the more artificial lightning on the previous-gen ports, rather than the one in this game. On the other hand, I had the weirdest glitches. The game would return me to the Start Screen midway through loading Chapter 9. This happened like NINE times until I close the game and booted it up again.... and then it happened again on Chapter 10. Absolutely ridiculous, particularly because I don't remember the PS3 version having these bugs.

 My biggest pet peeve is that the overall performance of the game isn't such a big step up on this version. It plays well enough, but since this was one videogame-console generation above I expected at least a fixed 30 FPS performance, but it can still get jumpy at times, mostly on the latter city chapters. I must insist, the game is very playable, and so it was on PS3, but I expected something better out of more powerful hardware.

 As per usual, I always want to play my games as they are out of the box, without patches, because a game should work without needing a patch. Four years ago, on one poorly written entry, I mentioned how these big, black bars didn't bother me.... and they still didn't. To be fair, unlike the last time, I did notice them plenty of times, and I'm sure the game would've looked even better without them, but they weren't bothersome.

 What really matters is... that this game really is one of my favorites. I love how it plays. I love how it looks. I love the setting and how its premise allows for such varied locales. Heck, I love how long this game in and how many different set pieces it has. I love how Sebastian looks, vests are cool, and even if he has little personality... he looks really cool, and what matters in a HORROR game is the horror itself, and the game really excels there too. Man, the upgrade system is glorious, I love collecting green gel which I can then use to enhance my survivability with more health, more stamina, higher ammo caps, or maybe spend that currency to enhance my proficiency with my weapons. In short, I pretty much love everything about this game, except maybe how much it loves to one-hit kill you. Playing this again really proves how, despite Evil Within 2 being a much better game on a technical level, it really failed to capture what made this one so special. Shinji Mikami should've returned to direct the sequel, and what's more, people didn't really understand what a gem they had in their hands when they played this game.

 9.0