The Evil Within Review (Ginormulous Mister)
Okay so, after having beat this game and playing some of the DLC, I can safely say, this is the most frustrating game I have ever played in my entire life. Frustrating because on the one hand, it has moments that show that it could be great. Chapter 1 comes to mind as a great introduction to the game. After that though, the game loses pretty much all of what it had going.
Shooting gallery after shooting gallery. Endless bugs including one in the Executioner DLC that left me clipped through an elevator, trapped, where I got killed by something I couldn't fight against. Another one happening in a boss fight in chapter 5 where I got grabbed after having jumped off a ledge and insta-killed. Speaking of which, this game has a lot of really not fun boss fights. I can't think of any reason to enjoy a boss that kills you in one hit. I love the design of a lot of the enemies though. The Keepers, Laura, Amalgam Alpha, Several of the common enemy types, the Sadist.
But why, OH GOD WHY, did they think that a burned up bald guy wearing a big hoodie was scary or intimidating? Even in the chapter where he hunts you, not once did he feel threatening. He's much more of a nuisance than anything. And his presence and what he does just sucks too. Being in one area and then being teleported to another because the designers couldn't think of good level transitions is really jarring in a bad way. The one hit kills once again return in that chapter too, artificial difficulty and artificial fear.
And oh boy, oh boy, the boss fights. I don't think I found a single except the first sadist in the barn enjoyable. Laura's 2nd fight has so many issues with it. The fire takes way too long to cut off in the end segment so you end up running around a tiny arena for 5 minutes dodging her. She has a tendency to randomly speed up in a way that makes it nearly impossible to avoid unless already far away, and all of her attacks are one shots. If you get caught, you are dead, and have to return to a checkpoint that was probably forever ago. The Keeper boss fight is just frantically running around turning valves on a timer, you can't actually kill the thing but the game sure makes sure you waste your ammo before you realize that. Amalgam Alpha has an attack that one shots you. I didn't know that it was easy to avoid until I looked it up in a guide later. (Might be my fault) ((Probably my fault)). There's a boss fight in a freezer room with an arena so obnoxious. You get stuck on the meat hanging constantly. The double keeper bossfight was awesome though. Unique arena, plenty of space and ammo and a chance to learn the arena beforehand was really nice. But the final boss is so awful, it's just a turret section. You shoot at designated areas and then the head and it dies.
The story is a giant mess, honestly couldn't tell you much about what happened if I wanted to. Even after looking it up I couldn't make any sense of it, and the character motivation just didn't exist really. I even had a friend who had played the first AND the 2nd and he still couldn't explain what happened.
The performances are incredibly subpar with Yuri Lowenthal providing the best performance as Joseph Oda, a genuinely nice helper to have around. The main character is not likable in the slightest. Just another beat-cop (detective) cliche character. He says random things randomly and all of his backstory is found in little exposition notes at given save points that are boring and pointless to read. Reading after that he was originally supposed to be a blank slate definitely shows. You have a main character named Juli Kidman who has absolutely zero emotion in her voice. Couldn't care less about her or Sebastian basically the entire game. The main villain's voice actor definitely doesn't help in trying to make him sound any more threatening.
The environments in this game seem to be pretty widely praised by people but I just don't get how. The color pallete is just brown and gray and sometimes red. I can get behind the gross environment thing but the game just gets awful to look at. Some very poor design decisions as well with some not just artistically. There's a room near the end of the game in chapter 13 or 14 I believe that has nearly invisible traps, fire, and a bunch of saw roombas, including an area at the end where you are just left to fate as the roombas may or may not swipe you as you do a really long defusing segment.
The A.I is a mess as well. Bosses will have attacks that have no room to maneuver hardly, like the Neun and Zehn boss in Chapter 6 (which is awful and takes forever but that's not something I'll get into) where he attacks over and over and over and over in a tiny cramped little space and you are basically forced to get hit by an attack that doesn't ever seem to end. On the companion A.I side, there were several times (most of the time) where Joseph would just sit there and do nothing as an enemy attacked me. He just seemed to run around without having any sense of direction which was annoying when you are getting swarmed by enemies.
I have to wrap this up at some point but if you want a subpar horror game with a confusing and overall badly told story, bad ai, good enemy design, and higher blood pressure, this game just might be for you! Apologies for the review having no structure as this was typed pretty hastily really late. Bye