The Haunted Hoard: The Evil Within (Xbox One)

As I played The Evil Within, I couldn’t help but shake the feeling that the designers were attempting their own version of a Resident Evil game, and when I looked into the game’s development afterwards, it immediately became apparent why. Shinji Mikami was the actual creator of the biggest horror game series in video games and worked on most entries in the series from the start up until Resident Evil 4, but there was an interesting factor in that odd feeling I got before learning the truth. The Evil Within does not feel like it’s imitating those old games so much as it evokes the expected state the series could have been in 2014, almost like a different branch than the more action oriented path installments like Resident Evil 5 took. With its survival horror focused on smart ammo use during the third person shooting, strange mutated humans, and a conspiracy behind the exploration of eerie mansions and morbid villages, The Evil Within carries on the spirit of the series its creator started but still doesn’t feel like just another part of it.

 

The Evil Within begins with Detective Sebastian Castellanos showing up at the Beacon Mental Hospital right after a gruesome mass killing has occurred. Attempting to investigate it alongside his two fellow detectives leads to him spotting a strange hooded man named Ruvik, Sebastian losing consciousness and awakening in a far grislier setting. After escaping from the basement where a chainsaw wielding killer carves up bodies for some unclear purpose, things start to feel less grounded in reality. The city blocks themself slide around and change their orientation, humans beings with spikes through their skull and barbed wire around their faces attack any individual without their same afflictions, and truly twisted beings like a woman stretched into a gangly six-limbed crawler travel through an industrial area you don’t quite remember entering properly. At first you have no real choice but to try and chase after the few recognizable things you can find like your fellow police officers or the single doctor and patient you found alive at the hospital earlier. However, such pursuits can become disorienting, the player hurled quite literally between locations where a fall down a pit can suddenly turn into a roll across the floor as walls become ground and a pit becomes a hallway. The letterboxing meant to give the game a somewhat cinematic feel is a bit too restrictive in the perspective it allows, but it can be disabled without compromising the visuals of this surreal twisted setting.

The somewhat sporadic setting changes do ensure an inherent amount of variety in proceedings and the confusion is certainly intentional on some degree. Much of what is taking place seems to have some connection to the mind, in particular a story emerging early on about efforts to make a collective consciousness to unite the minds of multiple human beings. The story does go into deeper territory than just that surface level concept and starts developing certain characters by having you explore locations important to their past, a somewhat stable understanding of the overall situation formed save for some areas intentionally left unexplored for perhaps future installments to delve deeper into. However, leaving some answers off the table and the certain directions others take do lead to some unusual explanations for certain design choices. While settings are certainly presented out of order, many of them do have clear ties to the core themes of the research on expanding the mind beyond one body or at least can be rearranged into a narrative for the characters relevant to it. However, there’s also a large dog monster that a church fed people to for some reason, and while it’s design is an effective bit of horror for forgoing some expected horrific twists one would expect with a mutated canine, it’s not the only case of something being included just for being a nifty monster idea. While amalgams of multiple bodies can be pretty easily slotted into a quick explanation, you also have fish-like humans that mostly exist to add some peril to some brief swimming segments. The model viewer unlocked for beating the game gives a rather lousy explanation for their existence and even demystifies some of the cases where an assumed explanation was better than the weak ties given to the central themes, but the deviations feel more like they missed a chance to build up better cohesion between what you’re seeing and the narrative’s direction rather than outright failing.

 

There are certainly some memorable creature designs throughout the story though, the prevalence of barbed wire over flesh and metal tools jammed through even the heads of the simplest enraged humans already an uncomfortable perversion of life that feels distinct enough to come off as something different than mildly intelligent zombies. The butcher with a safe for a head and a bag of human parts in the hand not wielding his tenderizer doesn’t need to be too outlandish to be intimidating and is often placed in situations like a small area filling with gas to make facing him claustrophobic and anxious. The long-armed burnt woman is doggedly persistent whenever she appears and will instantly kill you if she gets her claws around you. Even the altered humans start getting some new variations later on like men with two heads that make putting them down with your limited ammunition a bit more demanding, especially since some spray bile or have a lashing tentacle emerge from their gut so you can’t always depend on a range advantage. A fair amount of the twisted beings you encounter in The Enemy Within are rather dangerous, enemies other than the burnt woman packing instant kills and having more than a few of even the basic foes attacking at once can deplete your health rather quickly. However, there is a bit of a double-edged sword in how the game handles checkpoints. Checkpoints are rather frequent and usually placed in an area you might want to respawn in after a death, and since the game places them so generously it won’t hesitate to throw in a danger that might instantly end you. Usually you do at least need to clear some tough fight with a massive foe, handle a large group of regular enemies, or solve some more involved interaction puzzle before one triggers, but since The Evil Within does try to emphasize item scarcity, it can sometimes be smarter to just throw up your hands and wait to be killed if you’ve already taken too much damage to justify using your health items or you wasted too much ammo not killing the targets.

The survival in the survival horror thus ends up rather unusual because sometimes dying is the better choice than living with your depleted reserves, but those limitations do ensure longer stretches or difficult boss encounters require more careful choices from the player than if it simply kept you stocked up reliably. You can start to feel the absence of a reliable strong option like your shotgun if you tried to dish on the damage quickly early on, and since ammunition is scarce at times you will probably want to spend the time lining up a headshot so a kill will only require one bullet. People who drop without losing their head can reanimate as well and some bodies already on the ground will sprout up to surprise you, so burning bodies becomes an important element as well if you can’t land that shot, the matches for doing so again restricted. If you line things up right though you can burn multiple bodies at once or even set someone standing on a corpse alight for an instant kill, although the reliability of that is sketchy. However, keeping weapon restrictions in place does end up leading to more clever uses of what you have with you and what is in the immediate area. A unique Agony Crossbow lets you do things like place proximity explosives or stun, freeze, or blind foes while you take advantage of their brief break from pretty persistently trying to set up their next attack. Perhaps an even better aid are the traps already in place around the areas you explore. While you can defuse these to get scrap for making crossbow bolts, leaving them in place and carefully working around them can give you a brutally effective way of dealing with enemies. Lure a baddie into tripwires, shooting an explosive on the wall when they stray near, getting them caught in a bear trap so they’re easy pickings, and other little tricks means it can often be wiser to consider what’s in the immediate area rather than what’s in your ammo pouch, especially when a special set piece like a furnace or spike crusher can do major damage if you lure the opposition into it well. Stealth is at first a solid factor into taking down enemies, Sebastian even having an instant kill stab on foes from behind if he’s undetected, but its reliability wanes and it can often be wiser to ignore it so you aren’t up against an enemy’s back when they detect you.

 

Killing everyone you can ends up being fairly rewarding as well as many leave behind a cerebral fluid used for upgrading your weapons, ammo capacity, and innate abilities like how long you can run without tiring. Despite some of the danger being robbed of its edge by the checkpoint system, that strength is balanced so finding foes can still be tense as you try to pull off some trick to take them out efficiently and without any injury to yourself. It isn’t doing much to terrify the player beyond the inherent body horror in many of the designs and you’re more likely to extract a sense of eeriness from the unreliable rules of reality that can otherwise be a bit jarring when it comes to interpreting the plot. If something is nerve-wracking though it is because its likely a case where the checkpoints do fail you bit such as when Ruvik can easily ambush you and instantly kill you during some intricate puzzle sequences in a mansion. Puzzles are often more progress blockers to put you in peril as well rather than brain-benders, but the thought you might need to put into setting up a powerful trap to harm an intimidating monstrosity can instead fill that gap of needing something for your mind to latch onto more deeply. Exploration can still be rewarding though, not only with expected things like little ammo refills but statues containing locker keys require a closer eye and reward you with the way to open lockers in the strange save area accessed through certain mirrors that also lets you do your upgrades. The details you get about this location end up again feeling a bit lacking, but it’s just another part of the game that works for its gameplay purpose and for establishing some tone but won’t grant you the fulfilling grander picture of a plot once more information comes to light.

THE VERDICT: The Evil Within can muster up some unnerving enemy designs and a disorienting sense of deliberate confusion, but it also has moments where its plot feels inscrutable or it tosses aside some room for interpretative ambiguity in favor of a weak answer. The survival aspects are handled excellently though, your limited ammunition feeling precious and the traps you need to avoid to survive also becoming a satisfying tool for turning the tables on foes that can often tear through you with ease if you don’t manage them well. Overcoming powerful opposition with cautious use of what’s on hand can be dampened a touch by the checkpoint system, but it also makes some moments of extreme danger easier to stomach. Ultimately The Evil Within has the encounters with its twisted monstrosities provide most of the entertaining moments and them making up the bulk of the experience means you primarily have an entertaining yet tense adventure.

 

And so, I give The Evil Within for Xbox One…

A GOOD rating. The Evil Within doesn’t want to settle down and really ruminate on moments where it’s plot could be better explored or looped into the horrors you encounter, but that ends up meaning that if you do view this as more a means of fighting your way through a world gone askew you will be provided plenty to engage with rather than having a compelling underlying cause for it all. The twisted fish-men briefly ask you to think of new ways to safely cross a space which feels distinctly different than carefully making your way through the many different buildings of a village full of people who want you dead. The traps you find in an industrial factory like spinning blades and heated presses are much different then the tripwires found in simpler interior spaces. The checkpoint system really is hard to condemn or praise because it feels too generous at parts and yet it doesn’t completely drain your desire to hold onto your bullets and approach fights cautiously. The stretches of time spent trying to efficiently work your way around whatever twisted humans lie ahead are still demanding enough to make you think about how you want to handle even the simplest foe, and while sometimes you will just try to pop their head with a pistol shot, the need to carefully set it up to avoid waste allowing that cautious survival action play to sustain moments that don’t always slide easily into a story that feels like it avoided going in more fascinating directions.

 

One of my issues with early Resident Evil games was the all too common boss concept of simply taking a normal animal and making it larger in games otherwise about horrific body mutation, but The Evil Within manages to have the creative creature design for its twisted humans while instead failing in justifying some of them. However, as dangerous opposition they do end up elevating a game that otherwise feels like it sputters when trying to make its concepts more meaningful, and the sense of confusion does feel appropriate with the heavy focus on the human mind. The careful battles end up bringing most of the survival horror, but they do so well enough that it’s still able to pull off the sensations of danger and fighting for you life even though that narrative’s ties to it all feel disconnected at times and like they don’t often add much to the otherwise effective and interesting sights and situations.