Before directing The Evil Within, the last horror game Shinji Mikami had directed or been involved with was the undeniable classic Resident Evil 4 in 2005 – not counting (the awesome!) Shadows Of The Damned collaboration with Suda51 and Grasshopper, as that was a borderline parody of the genre more than it was truly a horror game – and having now finished his latest offering, it seems like what the genre has become has noticeably escaped him. That’s not to say he’s the only one to be credited with the game, as far too often a studio or developer can be boiled down to the one most recognizable face of that team – something I know I’m guilty of too – but acknowledgement should be a team reward as well, and there are many other notable people involved in this game, including a personal favorite composer of mine in Masafumi Takada. However, in the case of The Evil Within, I’m not looking for someone to praise so much as I’m looking for someone to pin the blame on.
Since Resident Evil 4, the survival horror game has seen many successful and inventive entries into the genre, such as Dead Space, Lone Survivor, Outlast, and SOMA just to name a few. The latter two in particular received accolades for their environmental and atmospheric storytelling, as well as a decided lack of combat. Also noteworthy, games like BioShock or Dead Space (among many, many others) have popularized the audio log/collectable method of narrative and lore building. All of these aspects have left a noticeable impact on The Evil Within and often in the worst ways, as the game comes together to feel like an imitation of other things in a bad answer to the question “What would Resident Evil 4 look like in 2014?”
Detective Sebastian Castellanos of the Krimson City (great name) police and his partners Joseph Oda and Juli Kidman have been called to the scene of a bloody mass slaying at a mental hospital, and soon find themselves in a waking nightmare fighting for survival against the seemingly indestructible and otherworldly figure of Ruvik. That serves as both the summation of the premise in one sentence, but also as the only part of the game’s story I can recall without going into speculation over the lack of clarity regarding anything else that happened. The world keeps changing because you’re actually playing in someone’s head? There’s some other unnamed organization trying to get Ruvik’s research? The young man Leslie Withers, who was a patient at the hospital, is the key to Ruvik’s escape… from somewhere? While the answers to all these questions probably in there, the game appears to be actively fighting against telling you as it goes along.
Communication really is the biggest problem with The Evil Within, or a lack thereof. Like those other games mentioned earlier as examples, there are multiple times when combat is not an option and that strong enemies or bosses cannot actually be harmed, so you must find a way to safety. Except, when you have five guns and a crossbow at your disposal, the idea that fighting isn’t the answer tends not to be the conclusion you’ll come to on how to proceed. Indeed, there were just as many points where I dumped ammo into unkillable monsters with little clear feedback that what I was doing was ineffective as there were times where I avoided the monster and explored the environment looking for the exit only to eventually figure out NOW is the time to kill it. The final boss fight would also be a big let-down if I hadn’t been so happy to see the end of the game, as it is more or less just a scripted spectacle with a button press a couple of times.
The way the game communicates it’s backstory also exposes weaknesses in the story telling and characterization. Often times when a new safe haven of a save room is discovered, there is also a journal entry from Castellanos detailing his time in the police force, meeting the woman who would become his wife, and their starting of a family that is torn apart by tragedy. As these pile up, it becomes glaring that the other characters’ interactions with this person they’ve known for years doesn’t really match up with what we learn of him. As well, this backstory is far more interesting and engaging because the people in it actually feel like human beings. I spent the last third of the game wanting to learn more of that only to find that it, like so many other plot threads, just sort of stops at one point with no real closure.
And then there are the technical failures. Basically every scene and environment will have textures pop in a second or two later than they should, and that’s assuming you can get the game to run. Whether just playing in the middle of a session or trying to start the game from the system level, there were probably close to ten times where the game just up and crashed on me, or simply hung on the black screen of a load and forced me to close the application and try again. As for the infamous letterboxing of the screen… to my surprise, it never bothered me. The option now exists to remove it, but I decided to try it out and ended up never dropping it.
The biggest disappointment of the whole package is that you can see where some of the aspects at play COULD have been something. The ammo and resource scarcity could be fun as you chose how to deal with each encounter carefully or where to expend your limited amount of matches to burn bodies or keep enemies off you, and the Agony Crossbow allowed for more variety and versatility with its special types of ammo such as freeze bolts and flash bangs, balanced against simply using your gun as you could carry significantly fewer crossbow bolts than bullets. The levels and environments, despite lacking some consistency, are at least switched up every now and then, so the whole roughly fourteen hour experience doesn’t look the same minute to minute. Finally, while the other performances aren’t anything to write home about, Anson Mount as Castellanos fits surprisingly well with the look and attitude of the character (although I’ll admit I have a soft spot for him).
Trying to keep up with the trends of contemporary titles has an obvious impact on The Evil Within, but it should be noted that the concept and execution use some tired and unimaginative ideas. The “spooky hospital”, the “unscrupulous doctor”, the “strange youth who’s the key to everything”; all of these feel like tropes that have been used a hundred times in the last decade alone, even if that’s not actually the case. Not everything has to reinvent the wheel, but if you’re already shooting low on the idea front, implementing these ideas poorly is a real kiss of death when the game you turn in is as drab, muddled and just plain busted as this one, not to mention it’s absence of scares for a horror game. There are certainly enough sequel hooks/completely abandoned plot points to continue off of, but you have to wonder why anyone would even want to go back at the end of the day.