The Evil Within Review

When Shinji Mikami announced that he was developing a new project meant to get back to some of the old-school tenets of survival-horror, I was, unsurprisingly, excited. While no man or woman (outside of the indie scene) makes a game alone, Mikami has long been considered the father of the genre, having brought to life both Resident Evil and Dino Crisis during his time at Capcom. While there, he also had a hand in the game that completely reinvented the legendary franchise: Resident Evil 4.

We humans have this tendency to fondly look upon things from our past, even when those things really weren’t as good as we remember, or when the advancement of time, technology, or society has given us far better options. A relevant example of this was Capcom’s release of Resident Evil 6, which received mixed reactions from fans—and saw many on the negative side of those opinions wishing the developer would return the series to the “better days” of Resident Evil 4 (which is still beloved and praised to this day).

While it’s unfair for me to say that I’m positive Mikami’s goal was to make The Evil Within stand as the closest thing we’ll probably ever get to a Resident Evil 4-2, that’s exactly what this game is to me. That was something I was once sure I wanted—but after 15 chapters, almost 18 hours, and 113 deaths (on Survival, the game’s middle difficulty), I now think I may have been wrong.

The Evil Within gets off to a really, really rough start. Shortly after arriving at Krimson City’s Beacon Mental Hospital to investigate a grisly series of murders, detective Sebastian Castellanos is suddenly whisked away to a world of horror—and, for players, a world of frustration and confusion. We know little about the characters or why we should care about what’s happening to them. There’s nothing to establish what’s unfolding, even just to give us a sense of why we’re going through what we’re going through. Then there’s our very first introduction to gameplay—a challenging stealth segment, one that comes in a game that’s not well tailored to such concepts.

If you can survive what the first couple of chapters have in store, The Evil Within does get better. Elements that made Resident Evil 4 enjoyable exist here, refined in some ways and mixed with more current-era ideas in others. One of the game’s most important action elements—aiming and shooting the variety of long-range weaponry you’ll come to make use of—feels just as satisfying and tight as you’d hope. Hyped as a trademark element of The Evil Within, the Agony Crossbow is a weapon that’s easy to dismiss in favor of more standard guns at first, but it’s something that really does help introduce some welcome strategy to enemy encounters (by using the different bolts to freeze or blind foes, set proximity-triggered explosives, or deal heavy damage). Thankfully, it isn’t just the modern-day equivalent of Resident Evil’s grenade launcher—and it’s a tool that you’ll need to make use of beyond just saving for boss battles.

Additional bolts can be crafted using salvaged parts you’ll find scattered throughout your adventures, and one source of them will come from disarming traps—a gameplay aspect that was heavily pushed before the game’s release. The reality, however, is that traps are just sort of there, getting in your way unless disarmed and occasionally helping you take out a few foes depending on which kind of trap they are. You can’t set traps on your own, and some of them are tough enough to disarm that you’re usually better off simply leaving them alone.

Surprisingly, far more interesting than those much-touted traps is the overall distribution of normal ammo and healing items. Throughout most of the game, I ended each chapter with barely any supplies left; that may sound like a bad thing, but that balance was actually kind of refreshing compared to other games that make sure you’re always well stocked.

Another focus of The Evil Within is its continually shifting locations. Chapter after chapter, Sebastian finds himself waking up somewhere new, just after he’d almost comes to terms with what was going on in the last place he inhabited. At their best, the game’s settings unfold in some more everyday modern-society locations that I feel go ignored too often in the genre, (such as city streets or office buildings). More often than not, however, The Evil Within takes us to places already visited in a handful of other titles. Oh, this feels ripped from Silent Hill. Ah, I swear I’ve been here in Resident Evil.

Those thoughts bleed into the situations Sebastian and his cohorts find themselves in, and soon, you’ll be saying similar things about the threats you’re facing. If Shinji Mikami’s goal was to bring back the older days of the genre, he’s almost taken that goal too literally. I’m tired of fighting looming humanoids with metallic contraptions on their heads; I’m sick of trudging through mental hospitals, sewers, and rustic European villages. What I also realized I’m now past, as well, are some of the gameplay aspects that were cornerstones of releases such as these in days gone by.

This is a difficult game—and not necessarily in the good way. “Live Die Repeat” may be a catchy slogan for a sci-fi film starring Tom Cruise, but it’s an old-school gaming strategy that I’m kind of glad we’ve gotten past. So much of The Evil Within will kill you without notice or understanding, forcing you to burn through countless continues in order to ceaselessly beat your head against the proverbial wall blocking your progression until you finally find its weak spot. Compounding that task? A long list of enemies and attacks that can one-hit kill you. I’ve noticed a trend in horror games that craft tension and danger by means of frustration and annoyance, and that’s not a trend of which I’m particularly fond. The Evil Within is, far too often, difficult because it’s frustrating and annoying, forcing players to survive situations that seem to actively want to kill you as cheaply as possible. When too many of your deaths come from scenarios you feel were beyond your control, that can taint your drive to keep going.

And yet—as if to contradict what I just wrote—there are times when all of the negative elements I hated about The Evil Within’s challenge somehow blended together into something good. In my first encounter with one particular boss, I was thankful when I finally bested it, wanting to never repeat that encounter again. Then, of course, it came back bigger and far badder, in a lengthy face-off that initially provided few hints as to what the game wanted me to do in order to succeed this second time around. However, both times, there was a legitimate sense of satisfaction in knowing that I’d just accomplished what I had—along with a strange liking of the torture I’d just been put through. Many of The Evil Within’s encounters—especially those with bosses—could’ve really been something great had the balance of its difficulty not been so skewed against the player so often.

I’ve played plenty of horror games that I loved despite their gameplay failings, though, and if The Evil Within had really drawn me in with its characters and storyline, I’m sure I would’ve walked away with a better impression. Instead, those complaints I had about its opening hours pretty much stick around until the final credits rolled. Even after all the time I’d spent with him, I still knew little about Sebastian and cared about him even less. I didn’t push through the tough times of the game to find out if things would turn out all right for the cast or see the resolution to its events—I played because I wanted to finally get an explanation for what was even going on.

Critics can rag on Resident Evil 6 all they want, but there, I at least found characters that were fleshed out and interesting and a storyline that made sense and kept my attention. Here, Shinji Mikami may have captured some of that magic that made Resident Evil 4 as great as it was, but the freedom his team had in crafting the game’s narrative ended in a disjointed, underdeveloped mess.

The Evil Within, then, must stand solely on its gameplay in its attempt to satisfy players. With its wild swings between legitimately compelling moments and better-left-in-the-past mentalities, I was left with the sad realization that the principles this game was built upon may no longer be enjoyable to the me that exists in 2014. This was a game that I truly hoped to enjoy, and in those times that it let itself break free of the shackles of outdated game design or horror-gaming tropes, it showed that brilliant glimmer of imagination and flair that I know Mikami has in him. That shine, then, was stifled by the darkness of what The Evil Within does wrong—leaving me constantly looking back at the chapter I’d just overcome and being thankful to have it over with, instead of looking ahead to what awaited me in the next.

C Average	The Evil Within feels like a project shackled by the desire to relive past survival-horror glories instead of pioneering brave new ones. Sometimes, it seems, giving fans what they think they want isn’t really the proper course of action.
The Evil Within was reviewed using review code, physical copies, or hardware provided by Bethesda Softworks. Scores are graded on a scale of E (Bad) to S (Special) in homage to Japanese video game grading scales, with the understanding that an S still does not denote a "perfect" score. Scores may have been adjusted from the original source to better fit my personal scale.