The Evil Within (360)

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Vexer1
Posts: 883
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby Vexer1 » October 19th, 2014, 7:59 pm

So after being somewhat let down by Alien Isolation, I needed to play a better survival horror game, and thankfully Evil Within delivers on it's promises.  It's tough but fair, as you're given plenty of chances to avoid enemies if you have to or fight them, there's lots of things to collect in areas(you definitely want to get every piece of green gel you can find to upgrade your stats, and you also want to get the keys to open lockers in the save room area) to help you out.  The combat is tense and brutal, you have to be careful how you deal with enemies in certain situations and be looking around every corner for traps(which you can disarm to make parts to craft items).

I'm on chapter 4 right now and so far the story hasn't been amazing, but I expect things to get interesting soon.  The game isn't exactly scary, but it is pretty graphic, it is definitely not for the faint of heart that's for sure.

Anyone else playing this?

 


velcrozombie1
Posts: 400
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby velcrozombie1 » October 20th, 2014, 7:46 am

Definitely going to play this soon based on the other games Shinji Mikami has been involved with (Resident Evil series, Vanquish, God Hand, Dino Crisis, Shadows of the Damned, etc), but since it's a horror game I'm trying to go in knowing as little as possible.


Astrosmasher1
Posts: 1107
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby Astrosmasher1 » October 22nd, 2014, 7:11 am

I might get it when it is cheaper.  Well that is a I will definitely get it when it is cheaper.

ptdebate1
Posts: 909
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby ptdebate1 » October 22nd, 2014, 10:34 am

[QUOTE=velcrozombie]

Definitely going to play this soon based on the other games Shinji Mikami has been involved with (Resident Evil series, Vanquish, God Hand, Dino Crisis, Shadows of the Damned, etc), but since it's a horror game I'm trying to go in knowing as little as possible.

[/QUOTE]

Just a little caveat emptor:

If you get the game on PS4 and don't download the day-1 update, the game is virtually unplayable it performs so poorly.

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2014-the-prepatch-evil-within-we-hope-you-will-never-play

Vexer1
Posts: 883
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby Vexer1 » October 22nd, 2014, 11:03 pm

So i've heard, though I haven't detected any performance issues so far(though the black borders on the top and bottom of the screen are kind of annoying).

ptdebate1
Posts: 909
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby ptdebate1 » December 1st, 2014, 12:29 pm

Started this game up on PS4 last night. So far, I strongly dislike it. Basically, every level is trial-and-error based and features agonizingly long death animations upon failure--and you will fail a lot, my friends. The graphics are dark and muddy. Unexplained mechanics abound (such as burning corpses--by tossing a single match on them!). Many textures and facial animations look positively 2006. Did Shinji Mikami have a bad day or what?

Vexer1
Posts: 883
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby Vexer1 » December 1st, 2014, 5:37 pm

I thought the graphics looked quite amazing, and while the trial-and-error sections are somewhat annoying, they're not nearly as bad those in say the early Resident Evil games.

 


ptdebate1
Posts: 909
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby ptdebate1 » December 15th, 2014, 8:15 pm

Well, my complaints about the graphics were unfounded (sort of). I realized I had forgotten to apply the virtually mandatory day-1 patch.  No sweat--it was actually quite small. Applying this patch on PS4 greatly improves image quality.

I've warmed up to The Evil Within--just a little though. The foliage in rural areas is probably the densest I've ever seen in a game and it looks positively excellent. The increased RAM of the new systems really pays off here.

The lighting design is also incredible. I love the grittiness of the film grain. Very noir.

The level design is also very tricky and allows for quite a bit of strategy, but, again, the game is very hard on the standard difficulty and will kill you at least about ten times every hour. The death animations are all in pretty poor taste if you ask me. The game wasn't scary to begin with, and the grotesqueness doesn't score it any points.

The Evil Within is like an old-school side story to the main RE series. Consequences of death are high just like the old RE games, but for some reason the scare factor is much diminished by its reliance on gore alone rather than atmosphere and mystery. You can only get so much mileage out of plain old zombies. 

Vexer1
Posts: 883
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby Vexer1 » December 15th, 2014, 8:53 pm

I liked the graphic death animations, they made me laugh at how over-the-top they were so they didn't come off as being in poor taste.

I'll agree that the game wasn't particularly scary(though no survival horror game has ever truly scared me, or any horror film/TV series for that matter).


ptdebate1
Posts: 909
Joined: December 31st, 1969, 7:00 pm

The Evil Within (360)

Postby ptdebate1 » March 23rd, 2015, 8:24 pm

So, I just finally finished The Evil Within after playing it in spurts over the past few months.

Again, as before, I have mixed feelings. One of the most interesting (albeit nonsensical) mechanics in the game is dropping matches to burn fallen enemies and, depending on proximity, nearby live enemies, resulting in instant kills. The detection for when and from how far away you can drop said matches is infuriatingly inconsistent even though the proximity effect always works like a charm (and is hugely satisfying). If they'd only made this one mechanic work better, the game would've been improved to a massive degree. It still wouldn't have the inspiration or freshness of the early RE games, but it would have successfully presented a nice addition to a a tried-and-true formula. 


do still recommend The Evil Within if you're a diehard survival horror fan. Although the game is not scary (at least not on lower difficulty levels), its mechanics use RE 4 as a starting point and depart in some interesting directions that allow for more potential levels of challenge. Let me explain: in RE4, Leon had unlimited sprinting ability. In EW, Sebastian has a severely gimped sprinting ability (no doubt due to his raging alcoholism) which you can optionally upgrade by spending green gel (the game's currency). You can forego said upgrades (which also cover ammo capacity, weapon damage, and other parameters) for the ultimate test of skill and resource management. And I mean it, dear readers, when I say that this game is hard on the higher two difficulty levels. Probably the hardest gaming experience I've ever had the displeasure to witness, and I've beaten all of From Software's "Souls" games. "Akumu" is the name of the hardest difficulty. In it, every enemy attack results in a one-hit kill, and that in a game featuring frequent unexpected ambushes. "Akumu" also ramps up the number and aggressiveness of these enemies, forcing you to remain constantly aware. 

I will say that the bosses in this game require a lot of strategizing which got very tricky in the later chapters. I have some questions for others of you who have completed this game. Vexer, I have you in mind in particular. 

1. What was your go-to strategy for late bosses that require a lot of zoning/management of space? I'm thinking of Laura and the final Sadist in particular.

2. What was your favorite weapon?

3. Did you find stealth attacks to be reliable enough to base a strategy off of for any of the levels?




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