THE EVIL WITHIN
Don’t like it. Never tried it. Every month we force one of our team to play their most feared game
When I first played The Evil Within it terrified me. Its clunky combat system shook me to my core. Its cast of repetitive enemies turned my stomach. And its weird, disjointed narrative made me wince. For me, the return of esteemed Resident Evil mastermind Shinji Mikami did not live up to its billing, and despite playing till the credits rolled, I came away as cold as my first kill’s corpse. Halloween may be upon us, but the thought of returning to this ‘frightfest’ feels like a scare too far. With The Evil Within 2 around the corner, though, I’m biting the bullet and venturing back into my “most feared game.” And somehow everything has changed.
Things I first found intolerable don’t bother me this time round. Enemies feel more varied and, with a pinch of salt, I begin making sense of its implacably confusing plot. I adopt a new approach to levels, relying almost exclusively on stealth and ammo conservation – and I even find the game’s otherwise archaic combat retro and charming. This feels like a new game, to the point where I’m half-convinced its mind-manipulation overtones have somehow breached my telly and spilled into my living room.
So what gives? I first played The Evil Within in late 2014, when Hideo Kojima’s Silent Hills was still alive. Somewhere between the PT hype, the Norman Reedus-starring trailer, and that project’s subsequent closure – plus the decline of the genre as a whole – I’ve realised The Evil Within series marks the last bastion of traditional thirdperson survival horror. Perhaps I’ve in turn let go and embraced it. Perhaps that’s all I ever needed: to take The Evil Within as it is – flawed but entertaining. Still, I can’t put my finger on it. But it’s fitting that, like much of the game, there’s pretty much no explaining it.
THE LAST BASTION OF THIRDPERSON SURVIVAL HORROR.