As much as I love "survival horror" games, I have to come out and say that The Evil Within is just a bad game.I guess I really shouldn't have expected much different. When I heard previews of this game, I was a little shocked that the comments were so derogatory. It seems most outlets (this was IGN) are willing to give an unreleased title the benefit of the doubt. We all want to see a game succeed, but this one was condemned before it was even born. Then, when it was released, Joystiq gave it a 2 1/2 out of 5, which they seldom drop on most games. Some reviewers were a little kinder, but in general it didn't fare well.
Now that I see the end result, I have to say it deserved all the criticism.
I did a Gamestop "rental" on it and as of this writing it has been returned after 4 1/2 fairly joyless hours. Yes, I know, it's a horror game. I'm not "supposed" to enjoy it, but this game felt more like work. Most of this was because the game has no story to speak of. And when I say that, I mean there are characters, but you have no idea why you are there, why things are happening they way they are, or what you are trying to accomplish other than to not get killed. The best game comparison I can make (and most other reviewers made) is with Resident Evil 4. But at least there you started with a goal of finding the President's daughter (though what she was supposed to be doing in some decrepit, Eastern European farm town I never figured out). What bothers me the most is the feeling that a story was left out of this game on purpose because the people making it may have just thought, "The 20-something demographic that buys this game most doesn't care about anything but shooting monsters, so why waste the time?" I think we've hit an "uncanny valley" of a different sort - one where these real-life looking environments seem like empty shells when they don't have at least an attempt at a story behind them.
Of course, this game also suffered from some mechanical issues. The camera gave me problems from time to time and, as I captured in the video below, the decision to make every door opening animation super slow led to unnecessary injuries. (By the way, why does this guy take doors so carefully when Ripley, in Alien: Isolation, would bash open a door when she came out of hiding? You'd think she would have wanted to be a bit more discrete!) I would also like to know why the developers wanted to pepper these areas with tripwire bombs? That level of sophisticated booby-trapping made no sense considering the enemies I was fighting and the setting I was in.
However, I was proud of this sequence. I had been killed multiple times before I got Mr. Chainsaw here and figured out this little tactic on my own.
Out off the time I played, this was the only part I thought was worth highlighting - which tells you something.
How To Survive - I picked this up for a couple bucks on Steam the other day. I guess you would describe it as Diablo meets Zombieland. You fight zombies (and other creatures at night) while finding amusing "handbooks" on survival. It's a unique way to build in a tutorial, but in some ways I just wish it would leave me alone and let me explore the world. The combat is wonderfully brutal (who doesn't enjoy chopping up zombies!) and the environments are nicely detailed. I didn't really play much of it, but I think I will come back to it someday soon and finish it up. In the meantime, here is a clip of my favorite battle from what I did play. I like that I was able to tackle so many zombies at once and still win!
Alien Isolation - I have always been an Alien fan. I remember seeing the first film back when the words "In space, no one can hear you scream" and the cracking alien egg poster were just becoming icons for a new generation of horror and science fiction films. I've seen every Alien movie since, including an unforgettable birthday celebration viewing of Aliens in a theater filled with real Marines. (They loved their future counter-parts and were having a ball showing it!) When I heard that Alien Isolation was made as a sequel to the original movie, I was intrigued. When I heard it was going to be a flee-not-fight kind of game, I was worried that it would be too long for that level of tension, publishers being unwilling to try to sell a short game for $60. That turned out to be only one of its problems, but not one that I had to worry about.
Road not Taken - It turns out that this is actually a puzzle game. You have to save children who have been sent out to pick berries and gotten lost in a terrible snowstorm. (Oh, the horrors of forced child labor!) Your character, who reminds me of a Jawwa wizard, has the power to levitate any object around him that can be lifted. But you have a limited amount of time to keep these things in the air. When you release them, they fly until they run into something or the edge of the area you are in. (This led to a rather amusing thing with a cat I found myself owning.)
Pix the Cat - Talk about Pac-Man flashbacks! So, you play as a cat, who has to collect eggs, which hatch into ducks, which follow you around and are dropped off onto targets that turn into tiles. And this is all timed and when the timer runs out, you start all over again on the same boards. This part makes it somewhat less interesting to play - while you can get good at a particular pattern, it gets old quickly. I do like how the next board is actually "hidden" in the current screen and then everything sort of collapses back onto itself at the end. Neat touch. Below is one of my better runs.
Castlevania: Lament of Innocence (KCET\Konami\2003) and Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (Konami\Konami\2005) - I know I played a little of one of these games, but I'm not sure which one. However, it really doesn't matter - I have something against Castlevania games in general. I've never been able to explain it or understand why, but they've never really caught my interest. (So why did I buy these? Probably to have a more complete collection is my only defense.)
Champions of Norrath (Snowblind\SOE\2004) and Champions: Return to Arms (Snowblind\SOE\2005) - Back in the day, my brother and I turned to these games as a suitable sequel to Baldurs Gate: Dark Alliance. They were, in fact, made by the same designers (while BG:DA2 was done by a less capable developer). I'm not sure how far we got, but I know we never finished them. They are great co-op games, however the lack of a "jump" button makes for some needless frustration when you can't get over a small obstacle. I suspect that I will dig deeply into Champions of Norrath one day and finish it. But not this day...
Clock Tower 3 (Sunsoft\Capcom\2003) - This one proved to be an interesting blast from the past. You play as Alyssa Hamilton, a teenage girl who was sent away to boarding school, but returns home to find her mother missing and a strange (and scary) man in her house. She shortly finds herself in the position of being a Buffy-esque fighter against evil, dealing with infamous killers from various historical times. These hulking brutes are possessed by evil forces that feed off the souls of the killer's victims. She also has to put spirits (ie, ghosts) to rest by returning sentimental objects to their rightful place. The gameplay is very reminiscent of Resident Evil (not a big surprise being a Capcom game) with fixed camera angles, but better overall character control - even stairs are handled much better. You don't have guns or other weapons, but use Holy Water to ward off enemies and open sealed doors. A Panic Meter acts as a health bar - get it too full and Alyssa freaks out, making her susceptible to being killed. Other than that, it's a matter of finding objects to open areas or things and solving simple puzzles. But the stories are what caught my attention. The designers of the this game did not shy away from brutality. The first entity you have to defeat is a huge man who killed a child with a giant sledge hammer and the second one throws people (including an old blind woman) into vats of acid - oh, and pours more acid on them! The graphics aren't very detailed (this is an early PS2 game) so you don't see any gore, but the nature of the crimes is more than a little disturbing. Unfortunately, I only got to the second "boss" before I got stuck - this is one of those Japanese games that shows no mercy. After 4 or 5 attempts at a fight that lasted over 10 minutes each time, I called it quits.
Cold Fear (Darkworks\Ubisoft\2005) - The easiest way to describe Cold Fear is as a lost Resident Evil game set on a ship instead of in an old mansion. But while the setting is unique and presents its own flavor to the game play (the screen is constantly rocking back and forth), playing the game is not as entertaining as even the tankiest portions of RE. The worst part is that for some reason, the developers either chose not to have in-game maps or were unable to implement them due to budget or time constraints. Instead, the three maps of the ship you are stumbling around on are reproduced on one-page of the manual. Without any other sort of guidance (ie, waypoints), it's often frustrating to figure out which direction you should be heading in, especially when the camera angle keeps changing when you move around. A promising survival horror game done in by unfortunate design decisions.
Cold Winter (Swordfish Studios\Sierra(VU)\2005) - I don't know why, but this was one of those PS2 titles that I always an aversion to. I didn't really know anything about it, but for some reason I thought it was an espionage-style game - something with little action and dull interactions with spies and embassies. It never occurred to me that it was more like Goldeneye and Time Splitters. And I'd never have known this without going through my collection alphabetically. (It's lucky it wasn't called Winter Cold!) The game is set in China first, where you rather undiplomaticaly dispatch a whole bunch of Chinese soldiers escaping from their prison. Honestly, I thought they would have picked a slightly more contentious location like North Korea. As FPS's on the PS2 go, this one handles very well. Character models aren't perfect, but they do react to head shots. I'm playing on Amateur (ie, easy) and I manged not to die during the whole first chapter. Starting the second chapter in the Middle East, I can start to see a lot of duplicated assets like the gun emplacements, but it still holds up. Another plus is that Tom Baker is doing some of the voice work. I'll play any game where he's talking!