Finally completed the game. My Mixed Reivew on it.
I'd be lying if I said I didn't somewhat enjoy it. It was decent. But this wasn't the Survival Horror game I was expecting. This was just like I've said many times before a more enhanced version of a Resident Evil 4 and Silent Hill Game merged together. Its got elements of both franchises in terms of look, characters, plot and bosses. And I do like games that can take the best of both worlds from different sources and create its own unique take on it.
With that said, the problem I have with this game range from several faults. This game jumps over the place too much. That sense of exploration and wonder isn't really there. I understand its done this way because of the way the plot is structured and told but that didn't really help it. And the constant Chapter breaks kind of ruined the flow for me. I preferred the way Dead Space 2 did it.
The Story is a mess. Nothing is really well explained and characters aren't properly developed. There's moments in this game where things just don't click well. For one thing, the Main Character, Seb. Your told his entire backstory in diaries that you find. But his character himself never expresses any reminders or thoughts on those details like they don't really exist. There's probably one mention of his drinking that hints at bigger things by Joseph but other than that, besides the files, I'd never know this guy was married or had a kid and wife that were killed.
Leslie is just a MacGuffen. His not a character. He's just there to somehow move the unexplained plot along.
Joseph is probably the only character that goes through any kind of development with Seb and he's wasted at the last second before the end by Kidman who herself is a bigger mystery along with the organization that's only revealed towards the end of the game.
What's worse is that her DLC Story Mission/s will obviously detail all of this but right there is the problem. DLC. Shinji moans and bitches about Capcom's problems on this, yet they gave us RE4 on PS2 with tones of new content and he didn't want that. And yet here he makes a game where a big part of the story is obviously missing in order to be sold as DLC instead of just being in the game as a bonus.
The Level Design and Locations for the most part are good. The various chapters certainly have variety but they're oddly placed and pacing is a bit off. In the end it feels as if this game is trying to do too much and doesn't really get it across that well. For the most part I enjoyed the chapters from 7 onward. The early chapters that basically tired to be Resident Evil 4 didn't really do it for me. I personally would've preferred more chapters like the Chapter 9 Mansion Setting for example.
The various big traps were interesting but its a shame there weren't really any thought provoking puzzles. And the stealth elements for the most part are pointless and don't add much in the end. They're helpful once in a while but overall, besides perhaps the first three chapters, Stealth just becomes a useless chore.
Ammo is indeed little but it seems you'll always have plenty enough to take on the various enemies. My biggest problem with the Enemies and Bosses are the One Hit Kills. It adds a sense of danger to the game for sure but it becomes annoying too. My biggest complaint concerning enemies has to be the Gun Tottering Enemies.
How many people bitched and moaned about these type of enemies in Resident Evil? And how many times did many Survival Horror Fans express that such enemies weren't really needed? And how many times did Shinji himself say he wouldn't have done such gameplay elements if he had been making RE5 for example?
It's really things like this that make me go up to people and argue with them about why I enjoy Capcom's recent Resident Evil games and that I have no respect for Shinji because he is in the end of the day a hypocritical prick.
He judges Capcom on things they've done and do when he himself is no better. I wonder how the reception of this game would've really be had it been called Resident Evil instead and had various elements adjusted to fit the sci-fi, realism bio setting of the RE Games because this game for the most part really and I mean really takes alot of elements from the recent RE Titles. There were many things in this game in terms of the way certain actions were taken in plot, setting and enemies that reminded me of just Resident Evil 6 itself. Yet people would praise this and trash that because Shinji made this.
And my other biggest problem is how he appears to be also slightly inspired by the RE4 Beta with the whole supernatural elements that he himself said wouldn't have worked in a RE Game and was the person who cancelled the original RE4/RE3.5 Beta versions many times and yet here he is taking other people's ideas for his own. But when Capcom does it for their games people call them unimaginative and stuff. So what's Shinji doing?
I really want to like this game but all of these things going through my head make me shake it in annoyance.
The Final Boss, why not deliver a proper boss battle like the previous ones? It wasn't bad but it wasn't good either. For a guy again, who complained about the action Capcom took with the series, here he is doing the same thing.
This game isn't really scary. There truly is nothing horror about it. And that's because we as an audience have grown up. This game reuses alot of cliches and predictable elements we have all come to recognize in Shinji's and the RE Games that it isn't scary anymore.
A Chainsaw guy, jeez, I've dealt with that before. A Pyramid Head type Boss? Yep, dealt with that before. An invisible enemy and enemies? Where have I seen that before? Zombie like characters? Shoot them in the head right? Etc, etc,
These type of games don't scare us and if it does scare you then you're either a child, meaning you didn't grow up with the old RE/Capcom Horror games of the past and are just playing your first or one of several recent horror games or your a person that for all intents and purposes is scared easily. But for someone like me, who couldn't really play and complete a RE game Classic until after I had played and completed RE4 at the age of 14 and then started to get serious and try the older games and experienced that sense of horror this game here doesn't do it for me.
Why? Well for one thing, the older games had crappy controls, crappy fixed camera angles, item management, back tracking, and mostly bulls..t puzzles. This game is enhanced in so many ways compared to those that it isn't really frightening anymore.
Yet something like Alien Isolation and the first Dead Space I found pretty shocking. Why? I guess good use of light and dark, sound and environment, build up of tension and mystery and not really dealing with bullet sponged enemies because fighting the enemies in those games weren't the same as fighting the enemies we usually forth in the RE Games or this. The sense of the unknown and unexpected. With this game, once you've faced the first Haunted then you've faced them all.
I know it sounds like I'm hating on this but this isn't a bad game and for the most part it did remind me of some classic elements of the past but it just overall annoys me how Shinji will get away with people calling The Evil Within/Psycho Break a true survival horror game when in reality it's just RE4.2/SH2.2.
I can't really explain how this game could've been better, well, remove the Gun Waving Enemies. They really weren't needed. Add Dogs or other animals and stuff and more puzzles. But this game, its really just decent. Its a shame because I was hoping for this to actually take me by surprise and make me go Game Of The Year of 2014 but it doesn't. If anything this game proved me how right I was about how it was really going to be and that's a shame.
I'm more annoyed with myself because I'll probably end up enjoying something like Capcom's Resident Evil Revelations 2 more then a game created by the so-called father of modern Survival Horror. If he couldn't really deliver then really, no one can anymore and its even more ironic that Western Developers seem to get what makes a good horror game these days then the Japanese Creators do.
But still, the big question is, is this game worth getting and playing and my honest answer would be, YES. It was fun and certainly interesting. Its a game that offers alot of various gameplay elements and it certainly could've been better but I think in the end of the day you make do with what you got as the saying goes.
Like I said, my problem with this game mostly stems from the fact that Shinji tried to sell something that felt like what Capcom were doing anyway with their RE titles. I'm just upset that the creator of RE in the end left a obvious struggling company behind just so he could end up creating recopies of things he's done before and that were better than this but sits and moans and bitches behind that companies back when he's doing the exact same thing.
Love breeds sacrifice, which breeds hatred. Then you can know pain - Pain