For as long as I’ve played video games I’ve played survival horror. Or at least what I call survival horror. It’s not too difficult to come across someone who feels strangely warm and fuzzy when thinking about the gore, death and that unmistakable feeling of isolation. But it was the pure strategy and thought that was needed literally before each pull of the trigger or use of an item that made survival horror something special to me. And for me that game was undoubtedly Resident Evil.
Despite the long period of success that franchise is all but dead to me. Tension has been replaced by excitement and a careful approach to ammo consumption supplanted by an entire arsenal of weaponry that fits nicely into your pockets. And so I join the ranks of horror fans in the search for survival horror. The Evil Within is the first game in a long time that might just recapture some of that survival horror glory. Particularly as the legend that directed Resident Evil right up to Resi 4 (basically all the good ones), Shinji Mikami, is back as director.
While investigating a mental hospital, were some serious mass murdering has gone down, you are unfortunately captured and wake up hanging upside down from a rope. Your newest friend clearly didn’t get that part for Hostel (probably a blessing in disguise) and your escape from him forms the tutorial and prologue. You have no weapons apart from your fists and a machete you managed to acquire from a corpse during your escape.
Instead you’ll have a tense chase based primarily around the games stealth mechanics. Almost entirely really because this guy likes running around with a chainsaw (can’t think when we’ve seen anything like that before) and manages to injure you early meaning you can’t run properly. The tension as you slowly limp away or narrowly make it behind a box to hide is fantastic. It’s one of those moments that makes you curl your toes, knowing your pursuer may be only inches away and there’s nothing you can do to fight him or even check to see were he is.
Unfortunately there are very few other moments like that once the core gameplay starts. Your main form of attack will be using the one hit stealth kill to stab your enemies in the head. It’s effective up to a point but don’t expect to be Agent 47. The attack is slow and leaves you quite vulnerable, as it should. But it doesn’t use ammo and you all but guarantee that the guy you just stuck a knife in won’t be bothering you for a while. You can even throw bottles to create distractions. Getting the balance between speed and silence is tricky but I found stealth to be one of my best strategies throughout the game.
One problem is what you should do when you fudge a stealth takedown. So your target mysteriously turned around at the last minute. What do you do? The Evil Within provides you with several options but if things go really bad it’s often tempting to die and retry from a checkpoint. On occasion it’s difficult to use items knowing you could retry and save yourself a match or a few bullets.
The same goes for health syringes which are rare enough that using them has to be a conscious decision. But you regenerate your health to a minimum point and often it’s easier, and more economical, to just rely on minimum health and fall back on checkpoints if you need them.
Yet another reason your health feels totally pointless is the constant and utterly ridiculous overuse of traps. Especially proximity mines which have a tricky mini-game to disarm them and can easily blow you to pieces kill you instantly, or at least take most of your health off. If you use a syringe only to walk past a mine you didn’t see and get reduced back to critical health you have to wonder if it was worth using.
The weapons are satisfying and well balanced. Nothing ever feels quite good enough that you become complacent but you don’t feel like you’re firing blanks either. Upgrades make a decent difference but a lot of them are unnecessary for most of the game. You’ll likely get to work on increasing the damage of your weapons and the amount of stuff you can carry and then everything else is just a slightly handy perk for late game and new game+. Progression is steady and you always feel like your getting somewhere, even if your not quite sure where.
Although you do have to wonder why the guns the enemies shoot can kill you quite easily. And for that matter why can they aim perfectly? And why the hell do they even have guns? Yet another survival horror that features a gun wielding variety of its particular flavour of zombie/monster. No horror game seems content without having enemies with guns. The game is more tense without them and the gameplay doesn’t benefit at all from their inclusion – especially considering I can’t effectively engage them at range.
I accept, as we all do, that certain realities must be ignored so that video games can work. But when you find yourself standing with a torch (of the wood and fire kind) capable of burning and instantly killing a living enemy, it’s totally bizarre that you can’t use it to burn an enemy on the floor. Instead you rely on your trusty matches which ignite them as if they were made entirely of petrol. Nor can you roll a downed enemy into the camp fire he is laying next to. Why not just leave torches and campfires out of the game? And if you think about the size of a bullet for a revolver how many do you think you could get in your pockets right now? I bet it’s more than 10. For a detective this guy is woefully unequipped. I would have rather had a space or weight limit and instead have to consider limited ammo drops rather than the totally ridiculous (initial) limit of 10 bullets and constantly find ammo I can’t pick up. If you had a pair of combats and a rucksack you’d be sorted. Oh and a jet lighter. Why do they never bring lighters?
The Evil Within really excels with environments. Every new area is creepy and impossibly well detailed. Exploring the areas is a treat, albeit a hesitant one. The backgrounds are beautifully out of focus and catching sight of a stumbling creature as you investigate the foreground is chilling. It looks stunning but more than that the design and workmanship behind every single inch of every room is really amazing. The first few minutes of each section before I started taking out the nasty things were by far my favourite. It’s just a shame so much of that atmosphere is lost once the fighting begins.
There are just these absolutely amazing moments of tension as you soak up the artfully crafted atmosphere. But there’s always something just around the corner to ruin it. The ability to rely on checkpoints takes most of the survival and conservation out of the game unless you actively ignore them. Even if you don’t use the checkpoints they’re always there as a security net. Creeping your way around to defeat enemies and feeling vulnerable and disadvantaged is handled well although personally I’d still rather sacrifice it for the need to use weapons and ammo strategically.
The Evil Within is gory and patiently unnerves you using the fantastic environments and devious enemy design to create a dark atmosphere. Personally I’d rather the challenge came from survival and conservation rather than difficulty but that’s just preference. As an action horror title The Evil Within is the best since Resident Evil 4 but I still felt the survival elements took a back seat. Either way a triumphant return of the great Shinji Mikami to horror and the best hope for the genre in a long time.
