The Evil Within

[JaySevenZero]

Here's where you can contribute your memories and opinions of The Evil Within for potential inclusion in the forthcoming podcast.

Friendly reminder to all that where feedback for the podcast is concerned, we love it - but self-editing (brevity) is appreciated. We do want to include a breadth of opinions where appropriate, but no-one wants a discussion podcast that’s mainly reading. Better to save yourself time and cut to the chase if you can.

[xbenblasterx]

I didnt pick this game up on launch, it was quite a while until it appeared in a Steam Sale at a price i was happy to pay for this resident evil in different clothes. The game isn't without its faults, at times the lack of ammo can be more frustrating than frightening.

However, there was a lot i enjoyed. The world building was simply great, and game carried a constant nasty oppressive atmosphere. The enemy design was superb, but should we expect anything less considering the names behind this game.

There was enough to enjoy within The Evil Within that i'd happily recommend anyone play this game for the right price and i'll certainly be keeping an eye out for the sequel in any up and coming steam sales.

[FemalePheromones]

Being a big Resident Evil fan I was actually really excited about this game before launch and couldn't wait for it to release. Unfortunately I was massively let down. At first I actually liked the setting and art style but pretty quickly I got frustrated with the lack of ammo and bullet sponge enemies. It seemed like an enemy would take 6 hits to put down but they would kill you in 2. As I say as a big RE fan I thought I would be really into it but after a couple of hours I realised it wasn't for me and haven't been back since.

[Mechner]

Having only played this game for the first time this year, I wasn't sure what to expect.

Surely it will be as good as Resident Evil 1 or 4 considering Shinji Mikami returned to create a new horror experience.

I came away from it over all feeling flat, the story is convoluted and seems to run rings around itself. The characters are cheesy and hollow in a bad way. I felt no attachment to anyone in the game. While resident evil always benefited from camp characters and cheesy dialogue, this game really didn't.

The letterboxing was an intriguing design choice, giving it a filmic aspect ratio, though really did take away too much screen real estate, gladly the patches have fixed this giving the option to change to full screen. Sadly it did not improve the frame rates on the PS4, the game at times can feel downright slow, like slogging through mud.

While story and characters were lost on me, I have to say I enjoyed the gameplay, even though I find over-the-shoulder games a little overdone, the gameplay was the only thing that kept me playing honestly. Tt had a repetitive nature, nearly mind numbing, but I couldn't put it down. The games highlights are the boss battles, they were constantly different, and visually interesting, reminding me of some of the great boss battles in the MGS series. The stealth system had the opportunity to be very interesting, but its mechanics proved too simplistic to really engage me, I often opted to just run in with guns blazing. But I kept playing...

The biggest downfall of this game is it's length, it is far too long... it really grated on me around chapter 9/10 onwards.

On a whole there was a lot of things that turned me off this game, and it is definitely a game that I cannot recommend anyone play in a post P.T./Resi 7 world, but for some reason I am glad I saw it through to the end, I got something out of it, not sure what... but something. (Maybe an Evil Within)

Roll on the sequel, hopefully it will make the characters more interesting, and build on the gameplay mechanics, to make a more fleshed out game.

[Alex79]

An unexpected mini bonus at work a few years ago meant I got the chance to pick this up relatively close to launch. I played it on PS3, and remember very little of it. I know I enjoyed the first half of the game, but it ultimately became so much of a slog I abandoned my playthrough and never went back. So what do I remember? I remember the horrible letterboxing, which was eventually patched out. I remember the terrifying opening stage, the heights of which the game never really reached again on a pure fear inducing level. I remember an utterly impenetrable story - I have no idea what was going on other than 'crazy man was doing experiments', but having said that, you could make the same criticism of most of the Resident Evil games, although they were at least a little more coherent. This story was like a fever dream, a bad trip, a mess of ideas thrown in to the air and falling randomly before being stitched together.

Overall, it's not a bad game, I just got bored of it. There were some moments I remember really enjoying, I just can't remember what they were!

[leady129]

This game wanted so badly to be the next Resident Evil 4. In its defence, it started off on the right foot, with the masterfully choreographed sequence running from the chainsaw maniac. Following that, the creepy level design, aggressive enemies and brain melting plot kept me genuinely on edge.

However as the game progressed, it started pairing you up with various AI partners for each level and the enemies become rather bullet spongy. Along with the transition to more day-time levels I started to get a Resident Evil 5 vibe instead. Still fun to play, but more an action romp than anything resembling horror.

By the time I found myself clambering up the back of the skyscraper sized final boss and launching a litany of rockets into its clearly marked tentacle weak spots The Evil Within had completed it's own metamorphosis; into Resident Evil 6...

[Conor NVM]

(Hi C&R team! Long time listener, first time poster. I'm Conor from the National Videogame Museum team )

I adore the Evil Within, and often not just in spite of its flaws, but because of them.

As I was initially playing through the earlier levels in the game, I was struck as to how derivative many of the locations felt and looked.

The aesthetic in The Evil Within is overly kitsch and this works as the game can be described as a everything-plus-the-kitchen-sink-style horror game. (Everything that has ever once been considered creepy in a videogame is probably in The Evil Within.)

You fly through the locations in this game. There often isn't any ceremony as you go from Scary Asylum, to Scary Village, to Scary Old House, to Scary Caves. None of these places ever have time to generate an atmosphere or, importantly a sense of place like the Spencer Mansion (RE1) has, or the Sevastapol (Alien Isolation). Whilst this is inevitably a negative aspect of the game, it actually makes thematic sense - as in the story all these locations are made up in someone's head!

In the end then, I didn't see The Evil Within as a horror game, but an imagination of what someone thinks a horror game might be like.
It’s a postmodern (Baudrillard-ian?) simulacrum of a horror game.

And how cool is that!?!

[ratsoalbion]

Hi Conor, welcome to the forum!