The Evil Within

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The Evil Within
You are looking at a big part of the revitalization of survival horror, right here!
Protagonist(s): Sebastian Castellanos Genre(s): Survival horror Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 3 PlayStation 4 Xbox 360 Xbox One Release Date: NA/EU: October 14, 2014 AU: October 16, 2014 JP: October 23, 2014 Developer(s): Tango Gameworks Publisher(s): Bethesda Softworks Country: Japan Successor: The Evil Within 2

"Upgrade yourself, guys. You upgrade your stamina and you upgrade your running because we've got to upgrade, guys. It's a console game! It's a console game! We've got to upgrade in a console game. It's a console game, a console game! We've got tu upgrade in a console game. Upgrade your health. Yes, please! Upgrade your sprint. Yes, please! Upgrade your armor. Yes, please! Hey! You've got an achievement. Yeah, yeah, it's a console game, a console, console, console game! Upgrade your health, upgrade your sprint, upgrade your fucking penis size!"

— Mack of Worth a Buy

The Evil Within, aka PsychoBreak, is a 2014 survival horror game developed by Japanese studio Tango Gameworks and published by Bethesda Softworks for the PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360, Xbox One, and Microsoft Windows. The game was directed by Resident Evil series creator Shinji Mikami.

Why It's an Evil Within

1. It offers a classic survival horror experience, like the Resident Evil franchise, which is frightening and challenging since the game has scares while also being survival. To simply put it, it's great if you want survival, but also horror aspects simultaneously.
2. Many genuine scares instead of cheap jump scares, such as getting the key in chapter 4, chapter 9, the Amalgam Alpha, and much more.
3. Terrifying and gruesome monsters that look threatening and disturbing, such as the Amalgam Alpha, Shigyo, and Reborn Laura, since they are exceptionally well-designed and can even terrify one upon looking at them.
4. The weapons (despite the terrible accuracy for the gunplay; see the "Bad Qualities" section for more information), is pretty good, as shooting with weapons is very fun when aiming (you can also shoot if you're not aiming).
   • The game also gives the player weapons, such as the handgun revolver (the starting weapon), a shotgun, a sniper rifle, and most importantly, the Agony Crossbolt; that weapon is crucial to get as it allows you to use different elemental bolts, which are the following: flash, explosive, harpoon, freeze, and shock; furthermore, the game also gives you poison and incendiary bolts, so it's not just five; however, the poison and incendiary bolts cannot be upgraded, although that's understandable since they're only available through The Fighting Chance Pack.
   • The flash bolts: These bolts serve an excellent purpose for blinding enemies, allowing you to kill them stealthily, or just in general; nevertheless, it does decrease the damage they take, but that doesn't matter since they're still blinded by it, allowing for free damage against the haunted and can lead to potential stealth kills on them; however, it does not work against bosses since they don't get affected by the bolt. However, the only bosses that it's effective against are The Sadist (the chainsaw enemy) since it allows you to blind him easily to get more damage on him, such as stealth kill moves on him (do not blind him again until he starts moving); and Amalgam Alpha, if the latter is showing its eye for it to work; otherwise, it's useless against it.
   • The explosive bolts: These bolts detonate whenever an enemy approaches them and can be placed on spots such as the walls, floors, and even enemies; besides that, they are amazing for doing much damage to the enemy since their damage starts at 100% but can be fully upgraded to 150%. Be careful with these bolts as they can damage you if you are not careful.
     • These bolts are also amazing to use against bosses such as the Keeper and the Sadist.
   • The shock bolts: These bolts can stick to walls, floors, and enemies like the explosive bolts; however, they do less damage than explosive bolts and are not meant for that; instead, they are for immobilizing enemies and allow great setups of dropping a match on them and doing a great amount of damages; for instance, if you stun multiple enemies with a shock bolt, you can drop a match on them to get a multi-kill. You can also use them to immobilize bosses or stop/slow them down, which is useful for bosses such as the Sentinel Dog, Amalgam Alpha, and Reborn Laura.
     • Besides being used to set up match combos and stun bosses, it's also helpful for doing a good amount of damage on bosses, especially on AKUMU.
5. Amazing soundtrack, with a great example being its game version of "Clair de Lune" (French for "Moonlight").
6. Awesome graphics, as they look like something that's meant for a newer console, and there is nice depth to its image, while also looking very cinematic at the same time because of the trivial letterbox (although it causes issues), that it makes it feel movie-like (take it as if you're watching a movie that is). The textures are well-made, the areas look dark and scary, and the props are also creative.
7. Axes and torches can make dealing with enemies less stressful since they can kill them instantly 97% of the time, as they are one-hit melee weapons; besides, using fists (or holding a weapon while doing so) as melee attacks to hit enemies is pointless, as even The Haunted can survive many hits from that due to how low-damage and knockback it does (the only time it would be decent to use fists is to stun enemies or upgrading it); they can even fight/hit back when doing that.
8. Adding New Game+ allows you to keep your gear from your previous save while allowing you to play with some new rewards earned from your previous run. Depending on the difficulty you finish, your rewards will be different, such as completing the game on Nightmare/AKUMU, which offers brass knuckles when completed and is so powerful (especially when fully upgrading the melee damage).
   • In addition to the brass knuckles, when fully upgrading the melee, it kills any type of Haunted in one hit (it can even kill the Keeper in one hit, even on AKUMU!), literally; furthermore, it also does a significant amount of damage to bosses, allowing it to kill them very quickly.
9. Despite its difficulty (especially on AKUMU), it can be a fun challenge for anyone seeking it since it does whatever it can to be hard and makes the player do certain things to get around this game's hard content. It also gives a great challenge on speedrunning with this, and each chapter has its challenges on that, most notably chapter 6, and chapter 11; besides, the game also gives a fun challenge when dealing with bosses.
10. Many scary monsters, such as Reborn Laura and Boxhead (The Executioner)/The Keeper, have become very popular and are considered the most terrifying monsters in gaming history.
11. Lots of blood and gore make the game feel graphic and disturbing; for instance, if you get a critical hit on the Haunted (which are the game's standard enemy types) with weapons such as the sniper rifle, especially if you upgrade its critical damage potential; and the handgun, while also upgrading it's critical damage, blood will spill everywhere, making it satisfying.
12. The bottles are very useful for distracting enemies and for stealth purposes. Not just that, but they can also be used to throw at enemies to stun them (if you hit them in the head that is), although standing while throwing them is slower and could have made it where you throw the bottle and it auto aims like The Last of Us did, crouching while throwing it is faster and hitting the head gives you the prompt to stab them with a knife (although you apparently have to crouch to perform that).
13. The game offers matches, which can help burn enemies pretending to be dead. It's also great to kill many enemies with it since burning the enemies with one match is satisfying.
14. The atmosphere is genuinely creepy, with some very solid ambient sound effects. The sparing use of music only amps up the effect, making it feel like something horrifying is going on when it happens.
15. Since it's a game directed by Mikami, there is a very familiar reference to the first zombie encounter in Resident Evil (i.e., in Chapter 2, when you encounter your first zombie, it has that to what Resident Evil felt like).
16. Many puzzles that require wits to solve, such as the brain puzzle in chapter 9, the sacrifice puzzle in chapter 6, and the room puzzle in chapter 5.
17. The saving location is amazing since not only does "Clair de Lune" play as the music, but the game also allows the use of keys and green gel to upgrade.

Bad Qualities

1. The game is unnecessarily very hard since most enemies, especially bosses such as the aforementioned Reborn Laura and Shigyo (although it's only seen in chapter 11), have an instant death attack, and they are also faster than you, which adds to the already serious difficulty. Even with "Casual" difficulty, the game is still quite hard; furthermore, the game makes very questionable design choices that make the game harder than it needs to be:
   • Even the trivial letterbox view can cause issues, such as cutting traps on the floor off from view or putting your throwing arc off the screen when you throw a grenade or bottle into a crowd/at an enemy; however, you can turn off the letterbox view so the throwing arc is much better.
   • Gun play suffers from poor accuracy; furthermore to having gun sway, shots sometimes will NOT hit their target, even if your reticle is directly over whatever it is you are trying to shoot! The only way you can improve the accuracy is to upgrade it.
   • Horrendous detection for context-sensitive actions. A good example is the matches; even if you stand directly on top of the enemy, the prompt to burn the body doesn't always appear, leading to panic moments where you either take damage or get hit/die due to waiting to perform an action that should've happened. The fact that the game doesn't give the player invincibility frames during context-sensitive actions such as dropping a match doesn't help either, as it leaves the player vulnerable to getting hit by enemies you can't defend against.
   • About AKUMU mode, you die in one hit from everything, even if the attack is very weak; some checkpoints are stripped out; enemies are much faster, which doesn't help since the player is slower than the enemies, especially when not upgrading the sprint.
     • Additionally, there are cases where whenever you drop a match on an enemy, they can still move, attempting to grab and kill you as they are still on fire, which is bullshit because once they're on fire, the game clarifies them as dead, no two words about that. This never happens on the survival difficulty so why the fuck does that happen on this difficulty?
     • Not only this, but the awareness of the enemies is way too high, meaning that it's almost impossible to stealth kill enemies while trying to since they can still hear you; they also do this on Nightmare mode; however, unlike AKUMU, you don't instantly die in one hit on Nightmare, but it's hard nevertheless. It also means that stealth killing the doppelganger is impossible in every shape or form, as they'll always be able to see you, even if you crouch to stealth them behind, no matter which position it is, meaning you can only stealth kill them on casual and survival difficulties, respectively.
     • The fact that it has more bear traps placed on particular spots that weren't there on survival doesn't help either (although it does help if you need more trap parts).
   • Several performance issues such as spotty hit detection, long loading times, and choppy frame rate. There are even times when enemies can shrug off an axe to the face!
2. The controls sometimes feel stiff or tank-like; in some cases, when you make an input and do something on the game, it feels like it doesn't want to read your input well.
3. Convoluted and confusing plot, complete with slow pacing.
4. Boring characters with little development during gameplay; some also make stupid decisions, such as Juli Kidman accidentally shooting Joseph Oda instead of Leslie Withers. This caused Sebastian to believe that Kidman killed Joseph (although she didn't).
5. Some puzzles and many stealth sections can be tedious to complete over and over again due to the game's difficulty, especially on AKUMU.
6. Some of the game's elements are very cliched.

Reception

The Evil Within received generally positive reception upon release; praise was mostly directed at the game's horror elements, gameplay, and atmosphere, while criticism was directed at the game's story, high difficulty, and characters.

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