Player3Podcast

Although I’ve never been a champion of the stuff, I have a long and tenuous relationship with survival horror. From the first time I saw Leon Kennedy stumble upon his first flesh-eating zombie I’ve played quite a few titles in the genre, but to this day I still get one thing out of them above all else: pure, unadulterated fear. Watching my neighbors play the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill titles, I’ve walked home many times looking over my shoulder, fully expecting the cannibalistic battle cry of a hungry dead man’s moan. Since then, I’ve been around the block a little more. During high school, I worked my way through Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill 3. College saw the Dead Space titles, but I’ve never really gotten over that primal fear. I knew this when I found myself hurriedly turning off the remastered version of Silent Hill 2 after a very early encounter in an apartment complex. It was a sunny summer afternoon. It’s with this brief and unqualified résumé that I make my trepid return to the horror game with The Evil Within, giddy and little more than a big bundle of nervous tremors.

 

By now I’ve spent a few days with The Evil Within and – so far, at least – my undies remain unsullied. It didn’t take long to fall back into the vein of the survival dynamic. The Evil Within very quickly places a huge emphasis on simply surviving, almost immediately demanding the conservation of ammunition, as well as constantly forcing the player to choose between fight-or-flight tactics. There’s no getting out of every scenario via firefight, but those who tend to enjoy a good fight won’t be disappointed: there are multiple occasions in which battle is encouraged, often by a prominent display of ammunition and health supplies scattered around the makeshift arena. Boss fights present a similar array of choices. One can either choose to blast their way through an opponent, quite possibly exhausting the entirety of their supplies, or resolve to utilize the environment to get the job done. I generally tended to find a mixed approach the most effective, using environmental traps when I could, often popping a few caps, and holding them off with one-use items like matches, hatchets, and torches.

 

In addition to the requisite thrills and chills, this game has a great – albeit trippy – story. The plot picks up en route as detective Castellanos and a gang of public servants rush to answer a call about an incident at Krimson City’s mental facility. The spooky feeling of being lost becomes apparent from the get-go, as no one seems to know what’s going on. Having played a significant portion of the game at the time of this writing, I can relate. As the player begins their journey through a long list of supernatural and downright surreal events, one can’t help but be reminded of the original Resident Evil and Silent Hill titles. Short wonder, since the former’s game director Shinji Mikami is the forerunner of this project, as well.

 

While The Evil Within’s gameplay and story are intriguing, a low frame rate and often awkward camera mobility tend to hinder the experience. I can hardly count the times I had to restart from a checkpoint due to getting trapped trying over and over again to burst open a crate looking for supplies, or trying to light a barrel on fire in order to stun a particularly pesky boss. Although I leave a little leeway in terms of mobility due to the game’s third-person action, experiencing these problems, as well as all the split-second hang-ups that come with the game’s low frame rate, are frustrating almost a year into the new generation of console gaming.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

On the other hand, the game’s faults seem to simultaneously work toward its advantage. Often grainy display that could be perceived as lazy development for a new-gen platform adds to the visceral gloom of the narrative’s visual ambience. While a walk down a sunny beachside path to a looming tower in the game’s sixth chapter displays clear distortion akin to the snowy shading over an old antenna cable show, it seems all too obvious that the game is downplaying the importance of a highly visual experience; in the absence of this slight disturbance to the picture, the sights and sounds underneath are stunning. At any given time, players may be creeping through a dimly-lit corridor or sprinting from shack to shack in a small wooded village only to see – wait, is that… yes! Yes, it’s blood, gently floating in the air like a grade-school science video’s slow-motion display of evaporation. At any given time, the entire layout of even a familiar room can alter. Exits can disappear in an instant, forcing a player to face the ghoulish bosses that any sane mind would rather totally avoid. No matter what the scenario, the game endeavors to deemphasize visual comprehension, breaking down not only one of the major tenets of a new generation of gaming designed to present near-realistic imaging, but also detaching itself from a matter of perception crucial to the horror genre itself.

 

To say the least, The Evil Within is an experience, if not of mere spectacle, then of the gut. Often, I find myself involuntarily shouting at the screen: “Run! Run! MOOOOVVVEEEE DUDE!!!” If an underwhelming analysis of form or a candid opening anecdote don’t really sell the game for you, then measure the weight of constantly exciting gameplay that invites avidly physical response. I’ve certainly struggled to keep from twisting my PS4’s controller in two, to keep from waking the neighbors at four in the morning screaming obscenities at an unforgiving television screen. But overall, I’m surprisingly happy to have a game that isn’t pushing the boundaries of the open-world sandbox, that isn’t redefining multiplayer at every turn, but instead utilizes and plays with the strict form of a traditionally guided single-player experience. The Evil Within feels all at once familiar and strange, like I’ve played its chapters in a hundred other games but am seeing them for the first time. Typically, I’m not a glutton for punishment. In the case of this game, though, I’ll gladly make an exception.