Often “throwback” and “old school” are used to praise a title for bringing old ideas to a new generation. Now we have the game which exemplifies just why sometimes a genre should never attempt this. Appropriately for a game featuring zombies, The Evil Within is a shambling Frankenstein monster of successful game mechanics taken from other titles. Everything here screams of the developer trying to play it safe, with little to nothing left to give The Evil Within its own identity in terms of either gameplay or mechanics.
This is one of those games I've been watching streams of because I've got very mixed feelings about it. I've seen some chapters that make me think that I should go out and get this game immediately, and then I've seen others that make me think the game's trash.
ReplyDeleteI saw the early bits where you have to sneak around the barn, and while I didn't think the game was scary it looks really tense, then I saw the bit with the invisible enemies that made me think it's garbage, the weirdest is when they have you fight waves of enemies but they don't give you that much ammo to fight them, which doesn't work well for survival horror.
I thought the earlier bits where you had to go through the buildings and could explore a little bit worked out really well for making a fun game, but then the game seems to get really linear after that, does it ever open up again?
Oh well, guess I'm giving this one a pass, at least there's still Alien: Isolation to play, and in a little while I'll be able to play Shadows of Mordor (which isn't out on current gen consoles yet, just the next gen ones), and then Dragon Age 3.
Well, let me put it this way: I was playing this on a friend's rig, the same one which was playing through Alien: Isolation without the slightest stuttering problem or slow down issue. The Evil Within crashed within a minute of starting and things got worse from there.
DeleteEven without that, the console versions of this title are bugged up the arse with stealth suddenly failing when an NPC decides he wants to specifically kill you regardless of cover, and the fact the title has been designed in bits. For example, half the game seems to have been angled for a trial and error approach, but then the other half has been built with the idea of it being far more forgiving and you rarely dying. The item system is intended to be scarce in a manner akin to System Shock 2, but the actual drops are random, meaning you never have enough of what the actual level is designed for you to need.
To be put it simply - The game was bad from the outset and the designs only got worse from there. In all honesty, once I was completed I booted up my old Gamecube and played two hours of the Resident Evil remake. In every respect from story to basic thematic consistancy, that's honestly the superior title because there seemed to be a game plan behind how the title was created.
Definitely get Alien: Isolation over this, that title's one of the best i've played this year whereas The Evil Within is quite possibly one of the worst from the last three. Not quite Ride to Hell: Retribution, but it's just somewhere behind it.