I’ll admit I was pretty excited to get my hands on this game. I was so excited that I got up early and went to Target right after they opened, and then I played it for most of the day. (Thank you whoever invented fall break!) It’s the perfect game for October, and yesterday was a rainy, dreary day. Fantastic!
I wasn’t really sure what to expect with this game, as I didn’t actually put any research into it before buying it. I was already sold based on title and cover art alone. I will say this, though: it’s bloody, really, really bloody, especially in the beginning. I can’t say I was particularly scared during the first hour, but it is pretty violent and graphic. Especially when you die. Dying is violent.
I did feel a lot of déjà vu while playing. Kotaku noticed this as well. As I was playing, I felt like I was playing a sometimes weird combination of a lot of other horror games. I’m not exactly sure how to describe it. At times, I felt like it was pulling directly from other games, and at times it still seems somewhat unique. But, at various points, I felt I was playing Resident Evil, Dead Rising, Outlast, Silent Hill, and even Alan Wake. I’m not saying this is necessarily a bad thing. In fact, in some sense it added to the experience. I love all those games though, so I didn’t mind seeing and playing elements from them. I guess the Resident Evil similarity is purposeful; I’m not sure if the others were. The game just felt a lot like a Silent Hill game to me; you can run or fight the monsters, much like Dead Rising; when I was in the woods, I felt like I was playing Alan Wake (except the lights won’t save you); and, I don’t think it’s to spoilery to tell you that you need to hide in cabinets, a la Oulast.
I didn’t really love the controls though. The character seems somewhat slow to respond sometimes, and because part of what you need to do is get away from monsters, the slow response was somewhat frustrating. It never resulted in my character’s death, but I did find myself yelling, “GO, come on, Go!” a couple of times. The game itself also lagged sometimes. One time when I knew I was going to die, I had to wait for what seemed like minutes for the graphics to line up correctly. The lagging isn’t a fatal flaw, and the game is still playable through it (so far anyway), but it’s a little disappointing given that I’m playing on Xbox One. I guess I have high expectations for this console.
The game is pretty easy to navigate, and I found it pretty easy to figure out what I needed to do. There is a lot of sneaking around, and you can get through a lot of it just by sneaking past the monsters or simply running past them. So, if you don’t want to fight, it’s not always necessary. Sometimes the sneaking is necessary though because you are just not going to win. I did find myself once just going around in circles trying to figure out what to do next, so it’s a little more open world than say Silent Hill, which often seems to be forcing you in the right direction, but at the same time, I learned you can’t always backtrack.
It may sound strange to refer to a survival horror game as comforting, but that’s really what I felt. For me, it was like curling up with an old, familiar book. If you are into horror, I would recommend this game. I didn’t find it particularly scary, but it is creepy, and it is definitely gory. If you don’t want to see blood or graphic violence, than you might want to skip this one. That’s my initial take on The Evil Within but, if you are still on the fence, look for to part 2 of this Power Hour Review next week after Wendi plays; stay tuned!
