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[The Evil Within] may legit be too spooky for me; still playing it
Wyborn
GET EQUIPPEDRegistered User regular
GET EQUIPPEDRegistered User regular
The Evil Within is an upcoming horror game you may or may not have heard about. Maybe you've seen some clips of it and said to yourself "Eehhhhh it looks kinda like Resident Evil" or "Eehhhhh it looks kinda like Silent Hill I guess." Maybe it piqued your interest; maybe you didn't see what the big god damn deal is. So let's talk about it for a bit.
Before you know Evil Within, you should know this guy:
You remember Shinji Mikami, right? He's a director who used to work for Capcom before starting his own studio, Tango Gameworks. The Evil Within is going to be his last game as director, and like he says in the picture there, he's focusing really hard on what it means to make a successful survival horror.
He's previously been responsible for some games. He was director and producer of the original Resident Evil, as well as director of its Gamecube remake. Every piece of scary bullshit in that mansion? That's him. Lisa Trevor? Also him. He made Vanquish, which was one of the greatest action shooters ever made.
Also, he made Resident Evil 4:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u90nv3bfuB0So if there's anybody you can probably hedge money on in regards to spooky bullshit that is also fun to play, it's probably this guy.
Let's talk about Evil Within a bit.
Sebastian Castellanos is having a bad day. He's a detective for the Crimson City police force, and when spooky shit goes down and a bunch of cops end up dead he's called in to investigate the scene. But when a magical force is killing cops, well, shit isn't going to go so great for more sent into the meat grinder. He just happens to be one of those.
But this isn't some typical "spooky ghost killing police officers" shtick. No sir. In the tradition of every horror game you've ever loved to hate, the world itself is out to kill Detective Castellanos. It's never clear where Castellanos is, or where he's headed next; the world is an organic thing, changing to suit his fears, girding itself to kill him as quickly and efficiently as it can.
And it has got some just incredible bullshit in it.
It is a survival horror game. It has a psychological bent:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3g8jcRBlbvAAnd it also has stealth gameplays:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGKuCIYGWwUAnd it comes out on Tuesday.
Who's hyped?
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But, I mean
The guy made the REMake, and Vanquish, and RE4, and God Hand
There's basically no way I'm not going to love this game
But my bigger concern with the game is that it could potentially be relentless. Resident Evil does really well with the idea of safe rooms and typewriters, but this game doesn't feel like it's goign to have any levity whatsoever. I'm starting to wonder if maybe it won't have any legitimate safety either.
I'm probably going to play it!
Steam ID - VeldrinD | SS Post | Wishlist
No, I'm not exaggerating.
Problem is, I like to play this kind of stuff on my t.v., but I don't have a PS4. And I'm not going to buy an inferior copy of a product on purpose (PS3 console still alive and kicking, but fuck buying new games to play them at 720p and 15 fps), so I'm going to be waiting a long damn time to play this.
But
Well, I mean, it's supposed to be Mikami's last directorial thing, so I've got to try anyway
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
There's one review, 8/10.
Steam Profile | Signature art by Alexandra 'Lexxy' Douglass
It's pretty good. Decently spooky, though I wouldn't call it flat-out scary or anything yet. It may be at this point that Mikami's particular horror language doesn't speak to me as much, we'll see.
Runs nice on my 660 Superclocked, which is good. The game running in 2.35:1 or whatever has a kind of unsettling effect, where everything feels like a cutscene even though I'm playing it. Pretty game, insofar as that's possible.
At an early stealth section. Scripted stealth sections are just tutorial things, I know, but this sort of thing is always hard for me because I'm initially bad at figuring out what's expected of me
More after I exercise
Man this game is violent
The very first segment of the game exists to familiarize you with the idea that stealth is important. It's ham-fisted in its implementation, but it's still effective, because it iwll teach you principles that are important about how stealth works. Enemies have a real line of sight that can see past obstacles or open doors, and if you try to hide after you've been spotted and the enemy hasn't broken line of sight, you're dead. You're just fucking dead.
The first segment of the game, the first half an hour, isn't very interesting. Then the doors open and you step out of the mental hospital and you're treated to the world as it really is, and you get the impression of an enormous animal stirring awake and turning its eyes to look at you. It is a malevolent thing, and it would prefer if you were dead. It reaches to crush you.
I'll keep posting as I continue to play. It's a very interesting world shown to you at the end of chapter 1. We'll see if the game delivers.
Im at the part at the bottom of the hotel where you start the generator.
I decided I needed a break before I do this.
Fuck that part
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
As time has gone on, I find survival-horror games to be less scary and more just dumb ol' fun.
Games like Amnesia and PT now exist, and as a result I find myself feeling more powerful in horror games that let you fight back.
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
That part is actually super easy if you grab the key card before activating the generator. The key card causes the usual enemies to spawn, so you can deal with them first.
The generator causes the bloater to spawn, but with the way cleared and the key card in hand you can run right past him and out of the area.
Uh-oh I accidentally deleted my signature. Uh-oh!!
I was thinking about this earlier, baout the idea of horror as an inversion of the traditional power fantasy that drives action games - it's about the fantasy of danger, of vulnerability
But in most survival horror you end up triumphing anyway, so the power fantasy is re-asserted, just in a different way
I'm curious to see how this game ends up handling it
yet in my heart I know Shinji Mikami can't make a generic game
I'm torn
https://medium.com/@alascii
You see, he thought it was going to be an absolutely generic first-person shooter based on the reveal trailer, that there would be nothing special about it
Anyway if you know it's not goign to be generic then what's stopping you
"Want to bet?" he replied.
One of the primary concerns about horror as a genre is that it implies vulnerability; vulnerability is the de facto assumption of action games, as well, but the difference with horror is the likelihood of the failure state, the need to avoid conflict whenever possible. The game lets you know that failure is avoidable, but if you fuck up then it's not going to be nice about it.
A single enemy in this game will kill you. Your weapon will serve you to kill it, if you're careful, but four headshots was not enough to bring down the game's first fucking enemy. You can engage in melee, but this is mostly good for stunning enemies and getting the Hell away.
I've only killed one of the game's zombies - magic zombies, bad hoodoo, all atwisted with pain and hate and despair - without sneaking up behind them. When I kill them, I cleanse them with fire.
The game gives me the option to light them with matches, after killing them. I don't know what happens if you don't do it - how long they take to get back up, how they might be different. I don't want to see. I can't find out.
I beat the game's second chapter. I'm... I'm still shaking, a little bit.
I think I might be a huge baby.
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
Steam ID - VeldrinD | SS Post | Wishlist
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
As a guy who hasn't played Alien, almost definitely Alien.
Evil Within is like a more intense version of Resident Evil 4. Like, the enemies are way, way more threatening, and you're constantly in way more danger, and the game does really interesting things concerning the limitations of the player character in some scenarios, but it hasn't got anything in it quite as relentless as the Alien. There are places you can breathe, and if you're careful and methodical you can rid yourself of all danger, if only temporarily.
I mean, it's a scary game - if the Garrador or Regenerator sequences in RE4 were capable of frightening you, then this will do the same, because when two enemies look at you at the same time your only option is to run like Hell and find a place to hide - but it's a survival horror game. It lets you breathe.
SyphonBlue doesn't find it scary at all, which is also a valid reaction, and I find it pretty god damn spooky, but if all you're looking for is opportunities to shit your pants then Alien probably does it better.
Now I'm only through two chapters of Evil Within; it might well get spookier. THis is just based on first impressions.
But man was it tense. Not knowing what was waiting around the corner was always a big thing the game did wonderfully.
Not to mention it would always good at bringing in long breaks of silence. If anything those quiet parts could be even more stressful than the actual fights.
well in my experience:
PSN/Steam/NNID: SyphonBlue | BNet: SyphonBlue#1126
https://medium.com/@alascii
Coincidently, it's amazing how the main character literally took a blood bath at the start of the game and yet his cloths are still white.
Moisture wicking fabric