THE EVIL WITHIN Impressions

There we were in the Bethesda showroom about to watch gameplay of The Evil Within, but before it even started we were treated to a little surprise... Shinji Mikami was there to introduce his game!!! This man is a legend. The creator of Resident Evil who went on to leave a huge impact on the game industry and reinvent the genre of survival horror. 

Just as he did in 1996, his The Evil Within is poised to be a turning point for the struggling survival horror genre.

This is what he had to say,

It is an honor to be showing The Evil Within. My passion is horror. We are making a truly terrifying game and with this game we are taking survival horror back to its original roots. This is pure survival horror. You will experience unimaginable fear but then the triumph of overcoming those fears. With limited resources you have to learn to not fight but survive by sneaking and hiding. But the game does have a balance between horror and action. 

This game looks great. The beginning is very eerie, and the script is top-notch. It's not at all cheesy, and the characters' spoken observations don't seem to be forced. 

The game has you take the role of Detective Sebastian Castellanos. You arrive at a crime scene in front of an asylum but all the police cars are empty and there are no cops in sight. Your partner points out that all the back up guns from the cars are missing, but there seem to be no shell casings. You make your way inside where the nurses' and orderlies' dead bodies litter the floor. You then find a survivor (a doctor) in a surveillance room. He mutters some ambiguous yet unsettling things before he passes out. You walk over the the monitors where cops are firing at a semi-invisible force before all getting stabbed. The semi-invisible force is fast! The hooded figure looks up at the camera, and you see this scarred face. Then you turn behind you, and he's there to cut you!

You wake up in the basement of the asylum where you are hanging upside down from the ceiling. This part is all in first person which I thought was really cool. This butcher-like figure comes in and hacks one of the many hanging bodies around you. He takes the hacked body to the table to cut it up a bit more. I guess it wasn't hacked enough. While he's at the table you start swinging for the knife stuck in a neighboring body. You get it and cut yourself loose. You then sneak around to the door which is locked, of course. You steal the keys which are incredibly close to butcher and make your way back to the door. All of this is very reminiscent of Silent Hill.

As you make your way upstairs, you set off an alarm, and the butcher, now armed with a chainsaw, starts chasing you. This chase isn't short and went on for a good while. He gets to you and cuts your back. This is when you gain something of a limp. As you try to get away from the crazed butcher, you find yourself at a dead end, but as he is walking into the room you hide in a rusty old locker. He gets enraged that he can't find you, making loud groaning noises, then barrels his way through the previously locked door, giving you an exit. You make your way to the elevator while the butcher is just a step behind you. The elevator doors close, and the deformed butcher grinds his chainsaw at door. You have outrun death and are making your way back to the lobby.

You make your way to the front door, all the while the environment is shaking and mildly crumbling around you. When you get outside everything is rubble, and the city in the distance is completely destroyed. 

The running animations could be better, a lot better. Sebastian runs hunched over with his arms flailing behind his back. It looks ridiculous. Hopefully this will change in the final product.

The next part of the demo happened in the "Perth House," a cabin in the woods. THE horror cliche, and this is where the demo got a bit more, yet not too much, action oriented. As you scavenge for ammo and health (in the form of syringes), you shoot two grossly disfugured humanoid creatures. You score a headshot on one which takes just the top off leaving the lower jaw intact. But these shots may have alerted others. When you look out the window, a mob of enraged and psychopathic creatures, who resemble the ones you just shot but are all a bit unique, have gathered outside the cabin.

This part of the demo greatly resembled Resident Evil 4's opening in the house within the village. Using some mines you scavenged, you get ready for the coming assault. You plant 3. 2 at the windows, 1 at the door. There are a TON! They just keep coming. You make your way downstairs but as you get to the door, the Hallway extends, and it happens again.

Then you're transported into some hospital hallway following a blood trail. You make your way to what looks like an operating room with a pile of bodies in the center. Then out of the pile of bodies comes this bloodied creature with disfigured and elongated legs and four arms with long black hair covering her face, who runs at you, pins you to the ground... and then it ends. 

The Demo was definitely unsettling, and yet I want to visit this world again. It's a bit trippy, and the soundtrack isn't overwhelming. Also the attention to detail was amazing, for example when you step in a pool of blood your footsteps will then start to to squeak a bit.

The world of The Evil Within is grotesque and mystifying, and I can't wait to come back.

GeekTyrant Homepage