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Alien is harder, Outlast is scarier and RE4 is better

posted 9 years ago by HennyJimdrix
3 replies | jump to latest

This game simply arrived at the wrong time. Release it a few years earlier, when horror games were at a real low-point, and we'd be raving about it as the game that inspired the genre's comeback. It's not a perfect horror game, but it's a big step in the right direction - or at least, it would've been. But now, in the midst of excellence like Alien Isolation, Outlast, Resident Evil & the announcement of a new Silent Hill installment, The Evil Within has sort of fallen by the wayside a little.
And that's fair enough - compared to those other games, The Evil Within doesn't quite stack up. Alien Isolation remains taught and tense throughout, Outlast pulls no punches with the scares, and Resident Evil & Silent Hill are genre legends which rarely misstep.
But The Evil Within, despite starting very strong, fades quickly. The undeniably terrifying atmosphere of the game's early stages soon dies down to a mild sense of annoyance at the confusing storyline and simplistic challenges (boss battles and puzzles are so easy to overcome it's almost insulting) while the characters and voice acting are severely lacking - Jackie Earle Haley as Ruvik is a chilling villain, but the protagonists are all fairly uncompelling and forgettable. Sebastian Castellanos has five different companions during the game, and you find it difficult to care if any of them survive (Castellanos himself included). Chris and Claire Redfield they ain't.
But these are classic flaws of survival horror games, and it seems inevitable that The Evil Within would fall prey to them, given that it is so committed to the genre. Alien, Outlast, even the latest Resident Evil games experiment with the it's tropes, while The Evil Within proudly says "THIS is what survival horror is about". It's paradoxically refreshing in its familiarity. But unfortunately for The Evil Within, those other games are simply better experiences.
That's not to say the game isn't worth playing - it's a great example of the old-school made new, and essential for anyone eager to get (back) into horror games. There are just other games you should probably try first.

[–] kaspergordon 9 years ago

I hear You.
I primarily enjoyed TEW for its twisted grotesque imaginary and its unpredictable nightmarish narrative structure (though the randomness of this structure, unfortunately also sacrificed lot of the atmosphere and coherency in the actual story, which all the one-dimensional shallow characters didn't help either). But as a survival horror game, it almost felt too dated - I understand that the game was trying to go back to the roots of the genre, but this shouldn't include chunky and limited controls, childlike unnecessary puzzles, or too many cheap or unpredictable deaths.

A game like The Last of Us (though I guess that title isn't straight up survival horror) managed to put you in intense and scary situations, where you really felt you had control over everything, in a way more diverse controllable way, where it was your own fault if you died. Plus you felt every bullet and item you had counted. Though TEW also gave you a little sense of important inventory management in the beginning, the game quickly threw way too much health and ammunition at you, and I basically had enough of everything I needed throughout the entire game, which took a lot of the dread and intensity out of the whole "survival aspect" and basically made it more into a third person action adventure. Just with more limited controls and a lot of gore and horror-elements. But I still wouldn't call The Evil Within a bad game in any way, it's rather enjoyable for what its worth. It's definitely better than Resident Evil 5 and 6 to name a few, and I would still play a potential sequel - though I hope such a sequel would take its time to polish a lot of the issues many reviewers had with the game.

Personally I feel that two of the best games to ever really nail the survival horror genre are Dead Space 1 and 2. Too bad the third installment had to make it into some sort of co-up alien-shoother. But it would be awesome to see a new entry in the series that was more like the first..

[–] HennyJimdrix 9 years ago

Totally agree. TEW is a reminder of the early 'classic' survival horror games - bringing both the good and bad features that made the genre famous. Admirable in a way, but it's flaws are glaring, especially when compared to more-polished modern masterpieces like Alien Isolation and of course Dead Space (the 1st Dead Space is my favourite individual horror game ever, even though Silent Hill is still my favourite series overall).

[–] yusef-ghanima 8 years ago

it seem the creator of resident evil is fan of silent hill, but he fails to achieve the atmosphere of the great first 4 games of SH, in the same time he lost the simple beauty of the early RE games, like code veronica.