Dusk Golem
A 21st Century Rockefeller
(ETTP: Early To The Party)
On mobile at PAX, will spellcheck this and answer any questions when home.
At PAX Prime right now, one of my biggest goals this year is to play games, and the game I was most looking forward to playing was Evil Within. Horror game by father of the genre, Shinji Mikami, the game has gotten some mixed reception from those who have watched trailers and gameplay, from a mixture of janky problems with the builds of the game and bad showings, such as at PAX East.
The Evil Within has a demo playable at PAX Prime (the same demo at recent conventions I believe, just updated build from what I can tell), with a further Evil Within event happening on the night of Saturday (not sure what it entails but I shall attend). I will update this post with further impressions and info of the on the game as I plan to play it again tomorrow, and it is apparently a available to play at the Saturday event with some exclusive seal and surprises (same demo?). I'm typing on my phone, weird half-working auto-correct and I miss/typo on it more often, so appologize for some potential typos and lack of pictures for now. Will fix up when home.
Because of demo times, I didn't get a chance to complete the demo on my first session, but I did get a lot of hands-on time with it. I was both fortunate and unfortunate that the PS4 I played the game on was being faulty. The system crashed a lot (clarification, the system, not the game, it was only happening at the stand I was playing at), but it allowed me to restart the beginning sequence a number of times, and get more time with the title as they tried to fix it and in the end replaced the PS4. Overall got about an hour hands-on time with it.
---Play Session 1 Impressions---
The first thing I want to say is that watching this game does no justice to actually playing it. I have seen quite a bit of gameplay of the game and this sequence, the mansion level in chapter 9, that I thought I had a pretty good idea how the game worked. I also ha it in my mind this game was similar feeling to RE4, as looking at it, it does definitely look like RE4. But it both plays and feels very different from RE4, mechanically and atmospherically, and really only resembles RE4 on face value.
But I don't any to get ahead of myself. I'm not going to explain the events of the demo, just my time with it, as you can see a variety of videos of this sequence on YouTube if you want to know the content of what the demo entails. I am a player who plays slowly as likes taking things in, exploring, and strategizing, I should mention to start things off, and played very differently than I had seen others players play the game.
There was a new trailer attached to the demo. It showed a series of cinematics and gameplay sequences I had never seen before. For what I could pull from everything flashing by quickly, there's a kid you're chasing that some doctor is running off, there's a sequence of gameplay where you drive an ambulance, and there was a series of video 'tips' on how to play the game.
As I got a chance to play the first 10 minutes about 6 different times, two things I can confirm. Firstly, the game is VERY randomized. I played the demo six different times and I had six different set-ups of how everything was laid out. Items laid out in the environment were consistent (if a green gel was lying under the stairs, it was a green gel every time), but breaking boxes got different results each time. Most of the time, there was nothing in a box, but sometimes I'd get more green gel, or ammunition, or trap parts to make agony crossbows with, and even one time I got one of those old grenades with a stick and fuse attached (item description was questioning what an over 100-year old grenade was doing here). The enemies are also randomized. The first time I entered a room, there were five enemies inside who swiftly whooped my ass. The next time, there was just one enemy laying on the ground I could burn. Another two times, there was nothing, and yet another two, I was attacked by Ruvik, the stalker in this mansion area.
Another thing I noticed is that the puzzles change on what difficulty you play the game on. The demo only had the first two (of four) difficulty levels available, but the puzzle difficulty scaled to the difficulty you were playing on.
I also got some time to mess with the game's options. The demo had the option for several different text and voice languages, dubs I recall outside of English include Itallian, German, an French. There were also options to invert aim, Change the various hud features to make the hud always appear, auto or fade appear, or just off. These included tutorials, health and stamina display, item pick-ups, an a few other things. Other options like audio level changing, to turn up sensitivity for camera and aim, that sort of thing. I found it interesting there was also an option to turn on a censored version of the game or not, but did not try.
The first thing I noticed about this demo area was that there were a lot of areas off the beaten path. Little alcoves of items, or nothing. I managed to find a piece of a map, which I have no idea what it does. The game seemed designed to be explorable, there were items hidden in a lot of tricky places, making them easy to miss unless you were paying attention.
The mansion area was also a sort of 'explore at your leisure' location, you need to do three puzzles at three different locations to to open a door to progress, but are free to explore otherwise.
And now for me to start getting to my thoughts. My initial impression was a bit icky. The controls felt very weird at first, a moment when you first pop into the area there is terrible texture pop-in for a second, as people noted on a video Pere at Bethesda did on the game, the game currently has 30-40 second load times, even after you die an reload a death: frame rate was actually notably mostly okay, a couple areas it stuttered but it had been improved from what'd I'd seen in previous videos. I saw some things like grass clipping through walls, and the demo even opens up with Ruvik clipping through a sunflower. Not on accident, like intentionally, it might not look so weird if there flower had some effect when Ruvik phases through it or whatever, but it looks silly right now and was not the best first impression of the game.
The controls I quickly figured out were weird as they're not what I was expecting, but I did begin to adjust to them and uncovered why this is. The game had some interestingly weird mix of tank controls as a modern third person shooters controls. Not like RE5 or RE4, but of you hold forward and turn the camera, Sebastian will go forward until until you move more left or right, and he ha a very tank-like control to him in areas. But the controls aren't actually tank controls, but not quite modern either. It's like a weird hybrid. I had fluid moments of sneaking around, moving about, and what I expected, but I also found one times, especially when I was moving and reaction quickly, I'd be playing it like an old horror game of your character running in weird turned angles as against walls and that sort of thing anyone who's played old horror games are familiar with.
The next thing I noticed is that this game has truly excellent soud design. At least in this area, there's hardly any music, the sound depth and positioning really impressed me, there's a lot of attention an care put into the audio, and added so much. Noises you can hear from behind a door, on the floor above you, as you pass by something, around a corner. It's actually all really well handled.
And it's not just the sound, the environments are really well detailed. I liked how you could sort of use the camera to peer through windows to see locations in the mansion, turn around the camera to see details like where you came from before this area, see the Manor and how it turns more castle like towards the backside, see shiny roofs drop water, a tower ahead. Inside the mansion the detail continued. Also the environments were very destructible, I had some fun breakin cabinets and bottles and knocking over trash cans.
On destroying stuff, a comment. I was worried Sebastian having a melee button ala Dead Space would ruin the horror, that I could run and just melee enemies to take care of them, to save supplies and lessen their threat. This didn't work at all even on normal difficulty, I hit a single enemy something like 8-9 times and he had hardly flinched and during the time I was trying to melee him, and in less than 15 seconds had taken away all my health from full and killed me. However, killing enemies that carry weapons, they drop their weapons which you can then pick up and use. You can only carry one thing at a time, they can be effective melee weapons but their durability is low and they break very easily.
The game is also not easy. Mikami had said he thought survival-horror should be challenging, as that adds to the survival element, and wanted to make Evil Within a challenging game, and he was not kidding. Even on Normal difficulty, the game was noticeably a lot harder than the likes of Shadows of the Damned on Hard Mode or Dead Space on normal, and felt like somewhere between Resident Evil 4 on Nornal and Pro on difficulty. This was a later (9 of 16 or something like that) and keeping I mind I was adjusting the game, but the regular enemies are much tougher than Ganados or Majini. When they are downed, they sometimes will flail around and try to swipe and attack you if you get close to try and melee them. When they are downed, you cam burn the corpse woth a limited match and keresone. If you don't get a headshot or burn them, they have a chance to get back up as a much faster and stronger version of themselves, much like Crimson Heads.
The save rooms aren't really rooms, you hear music playing as follow it, and find a mirror that begins to start heavily glowing. You can hold a button to enter, and find yourself in a sort of 'hub' area. There's a nurse and a series of rooms, some rooms and whole areas I couldn't acces yet, and there were a variety of mirrors and glowing cracks throughout the hub I could use to return. Exploring around, there's a place to upgrade stuff with green gel, a series of locked doors to store bodies in a morgue which you can collect keys in the main game to unlock, there were files and creepy paintings, a prison cell area, and things that look like they may play importance at some point, but didn't in the demo (a gramophone and viewfinder, to name two). This seems to be a hub-like safe haven, which is different.
The game playing it really didn't feel like RE4. I know it looks like it and I think this is what people are expecting looking at it, but it plays so differently mechanically and atmospherically feels so different it honestly didn't feel like a follow-up to RE4. I can't quite put my finger yet on how to describe it, but take this from someone who has who thought it looked like RE4 in videos, it doesn't feel like RE4 playing it and honestly does have excellent anosphere, which I wasn't expecting. This is helped by being uncertain of what might be around the next corner, the fact the enemies are legit steely tough, the creepy sound and moody lighting, and a number of elements that keep you on your toes.
There were some randomized mood effects that happened when playing a few times. There was one time when a candle light flickered and went dark and back on again that never happened again I that room replaying it for me. There was a scene of a shadow eating something ahead of me and sounds that only happened once for me and never again (involving an enemy that was never there again in my six runs).
Ruvik also was panic-inducing. He's an invincible stalker that chase you as many may know. The screen gets a weir dark blue effect and this music begins playing, and you h e to either run or hide from him. He appeared in right corridor areas for me with multiple paths so I could never guess which way he was coming from.
I also saw the loading screens, and some of the tips were interesting, as well as load screens. My favorite was one involving different mannequins with tear marks under their eyes, things happen as the game loads, and so far didn't see a same load screen twice. Two interesting tips is that it mentioned the enemy with multiple arms and long black hair can be defeated, but it isn't recommended. Also a tip about making sure not to look at something.
---
Played the demo again a bit ago on the show floor, second go impressions.
---Second Try Impressions---
Got a lot further this time while playing, and this time played the Xbox One version.
Two things about the Xbox One version: It must be much more optimized right now. Load times were cut in half compared to the PS4 (15-25 seconds), and the frame rate didn't suffer at all, it looked a solid 30 FPS the whole time. But I noticed that the the game didn't look as sharp as the PS4 version and the audio was slightly different (if this makes any sense you can't hear things as far away as you can on PS4). I could hear the Save Room theme from across the hall for example on the PS4, but only in front of the door on the Xbox One. And there were other changes too, there was, in fact, music on the Xbox version. It didn't ruin anything as it was undertoned and creepy, but it leads me to believe the Xbox One version is better along than the PS4 version. Didn't even see any texture pop-in.
I also got a lot further this time, I got up the last puzzle before the door in the main entrance locked off when I ran out of time, but I did notice and observe some stuff this time.
The controls on Xbox One felt more regular. Not controller preference, I mean the tank control element was lightened some with walking around. Aiming felt the same, but moving around felt a lot more like you'd expect a TPS to move. I'm curious about why that is.
I managed to get a goddess key and open one of the morgue lockers. For a grenade (the ond-styled one I mentioned yesterday).
On the options screen I have found that you can in fact increase or decrease screen noise, so if you like it or dislike it you can change the percentage in the game to a lot or none.
I mentioned this on the EW forums but not NeoGAF, but there's a 'Show Partner Health' option I the HUD options, making me think there will be sections with you and another character.
Someone asked about volume on consoles. You can adjust everything's volumes; music, voices, sounds, cutscenes, are the four options.
A random note, The game has a lot of load screens. I have not seen the exact same load screen twice, though some variation (Ruvik is in the elevator, no Laura is the next time this screen pops up!) Also the game must have some big mannequin section or something. Two different load screens with mannequins. I saw this one today with baby mannequins. No idea what they have to so with the game as of yet, but they were sitting creepingly on the floor in a light in the dark room, the light would go off, and turn back and they'd be someplace else.
Ruvik scares me. He literally can appear at any time. I was fighting a few enemies in a room web suddenly in the middle of this Ruvik bursts through the door and suddenly his music and screen effect happened, and I was in a mighty inconvenient location to maneuver past him and the two enemies.
Getting headshots in the game is more challenging as the enemies bob their heads around and you need to shoot in a very specific spot, and I've found out Sebastian's accuracy when on low level with a weapon is horrendous. I've had shots with the pistol shoot over a foot in another direction of where I shot, so on low accuracy level the reticle box is actually more, 'the area your shot will actually land at'.
This may come as no surprise, but there are, in fact, some scripted enemy scenarios, so not all enemies are random.
The demo made me curious about some things. I was running through a hall and then heard this REALLY creepy clown laugh echoing through the halls, then suddenly all the enemies in the manor were all wearing clown masks. I have no idea what was up with that.
The puzzles here weren't hard but were interesting I will say. Some nice gothic inspiration behind them. Liked the painting puzzle.
I figured out how to set items to the d-pad, so that was nice. And to confirm something, your inventory slows down the game but doesn't stop it so you can still be hurt while using it.
There are two aiming modes, the proper aiming mode, and a 'free shoot' mode. The first aiming mode make the camera zoom in behind the shoulder, you move slower but shoot more precisely. How close behind the shoulder depends on the area you're in. Tight corridors will put it almost in a FPS mode, default is a bit closer than RE4, but not by much, sometimes more pulled back.
There seems to be a chance when you run out of stamina Sebastian will stop in his tracks and take 3-5 seconds to catch his breath. Again, mashing the X button makes this go faster, as does recharging stamina.
There are four areas to upgrade with green gel, yourself (health, stamina, etc), weapons, capacity, and the Agony Bolt. I had fun with the agony bolt today, the explosive bolts were fun.
On that, I hit an enemy with a explosive bolt, but it takes a few seconds to explode, enemy grabbed me and I exploded. Game confirmed to have dissection deaths, Sebastian literally exploded into pieces, but you could tell what all the pieces were. Happy to have Mikami deaths back after they left RE with RE5. Another one involves an enemy slitting your throat and blood purring out.
Speaking of blood. A fun blood splatter effect in this game. Killing enemies near blood or furniture will splatter blood on these that stick for a small bit. Killing an enemy close to you in a Corey fashion will have blood coat Sebastian for a few moments as well.
There was a hallway that wouldn't look out of place in Silent Hill that involved paintings with sections in them (that worked with the composition of the painting) that were turned into holes showing squirming, organic tissue inside.
Ran out of ammo for a while, and can say these enemies have it! By 'it', I mean that they're deadly, and have tricks, but you can run past them and avoid them, though they'll give more chase than zombies in the old RE game, you can outrun them and lure them to run past them I hallways.
That's about all I noticed in my play session, now for the event tonight! I suspect it'll be the same demo, but still excited.
---
I'll have more impressions later from the 4-hour Bethesda Evil Within event, as so many people seem not to know what to think of the game I thought I might throw out first impressions from the demo. So far I mus say feels much different to play than to watch, an in a good way. Does feel like a horror game, unnerved me even though only scared me once so far. More of an uneasy feeling.
On mobile at PAX, will spellcheck this and answer any questions when home.
At PAX Prime right now, one of my biggest goals this year is to play games, and the game I was most looking forward to playing was Evil Within. Horror game by father of the genre, Shinji Mikami, the game has gotten some mixed reception from those who have watched trailers and gameplay, from a mixture of janky problems with the builds of the game and bad showings, such as at PAX East.
The Evil Within has a demo playable at PAX Prime (the same demo at recent conventions I believe, just updated build from what I can tell), with a further Evil Within event happening on the night of Saturday (not sure what it entails but I shall attend). I will update this post with further impressions and info of the on the game as I plan to play it again tomorrow, and it is apparently a available to play at the Saturday event with some exclusive seal and surprises (same demo?). I'm typing on my phone, weird half-working auto-correct and I miss/typo on it more often, so appologize for some potential typos and lack of pictures for now. Will fix up when home.
Because of demo times, I didn't get a chance to complete the demo on my first session, but I did get a lot of hands-on time with it. I was both fortunate and unfortunate that the PS4 I played the game on was being faulty. The system crashed a lot (clarification, the system, not the game, it was only happening at the stand I was playing at), but it allowed me to restart the beginning sequence a number of times, and get more time with the title as they tried to fix it and in the end replaced the PS4. Overall got about an hour hands-on time with it.
---Play Session 1 Impressions---
The first thing I want to say is that watching this game does no justice to actually playing it. I have seen quite a bit of gameplay of the game and this sequence, the mansion level in chapter 9, that I thought I had a pretty good idea how the game worked. I also ha it in my mind this game was similar feeling to RE4, as looking at it, it does definitely look like RE4. But it both plays and feels very different from RE4, mechanically and atmospherically, and really only resembles RE4 on face value.
But I don't any to get ahead of myself. I'm not going to explain the events of the demo, just my time with it, as you can see a variety of videos of this sequence on YouTube if you want to know the content of what the demo entails. I am a player who plays slowly as likes taking things in, exploring, and strategizing, I should mention to start things off, and played very differently than I had seen others players play the game.
There was a new trailer attached to the demo. It showed a series of cinematics and gameplay sequences I had never seen before. For what I could pull from everything flashing by quickly, there's a kid you're chasing that some doctor is running off, there's a sequence of gameplay where you drive an ambulance, and there was a series of video 'tips' on how to play the game.
As I got a chance to play the first 10 minutes about 6 different times, two things I can confirm. Firstly, the game is VERY randomized. I played the demo six different times and I had six different set-ups of how everything was laid out. Items laid out in the environment were consistent (if a green gel was lying under the stairs, it was a green gel every time), but breaking boxes got different results each time. Most of the time, there was nothing in a box, but sometimes I'd get more green gel, or ammunition, or trap parts to make agony crossbows with, and even one time I got one of those old grenades with a stick and fuse attached (item description was questioning what an over 100-year old grenade was doing here). The enemies are also randomized. The first time I entered a room, there were five enemies inside who swiftly whooped my ass. The next time, there was just one enemy laying on the ground I could burn. Another two times, there was nothing, and yet another two, I was attacked by Ruvik, the stalker in this mansion area.
Another thing I noticed is that the puzzles change on what difficulty you play the game on. The demo only had the first two (of four) difficulty levels available, but the puzzle difficulty scaled to the difficulty you were playing on.
I also got some time to mess with the game's options. The demo had the option for several different text and voice languages, dubs I recall outside of English include Itallian, German, an French. There were also options to invert aim, Change the various hud features to make the hud always appear, auto or fade appear, or just off. These included tutorials, health and stamina display, item pick-ups, an a few other things. Other options like audio level changing, to turn up sensitivity for camera and aim, that sort of thing. I found it interesting there was also an option to turn on a censored version of the game or not, but did not try.
The first thing I noticed about this demo area was that there were a lot of areas off the beaten path. Little alcoves of items, or nothing. I managed to find a piece of a map, which I have no idea what it does. The game seemed designed to be explorable, there were items hidden in a lot of tricky places, making them easy to miss unless you were paying attention.
The mansion area was also a sort of 'explore at your leisure' location, you need to do three puzzles at three different locations to to open a door to progress, but are free to explore otherwise.
And now for me to start getting to my thoughts. My initial impression was a bit icky. The controls felt very weird at first, a moment when you first pop into the area there is terrible texture pop-in for a second, as people noted on a video Pere at Bethesda did on the game, the game currently has 30-40 second load times, even after you die an reload a death: frame rate was actually notably mostly okay, a couple areas it stuttered but it had been improved from what'd I'd seen in previous videos. I saw some things like grass clipping through walls, and the demo even opens up with Ruvik clipping through a sunflower. Not on accident, like intentionally, it might not look so weird if there flower had some effect when Ruvik phases through it or whatever, but it looks silly right now and was not the best first impression of the game.
The controls I quickly figured out were weird as they're not what I was expecting, but I did begin to adjust to them and uncovered why this is. The game had some interestingly weird mix of tank controls as a modern third person shooters controls. Not like RE5 or RE4, but of you hold forward and turn the camera, Sebastian will go forward until until you move more left or right, and he ha a very tank-like control to him in areas. But the controls aren't actually tank controls, but not quite modern either. It's like a weird hybrid. I had fluid moments of sneaking around, moving about, and what I expected, but I also found one times, especially when I was moving and reaction quickly, I'd be playing it like an old horror game of your character running in weird turned angles as against walls and that sort of thing anyone who's played old horror games are familiar with.
The next thing I noticed is that this game has truly excellent soud design. At least in this area, there's hardly any music, the sound depth and positioning really impressed me, there's a lot of attention an care put into the audio, and added so much. Noises you can hear from behind a door, on the floor above you, as you pass by something, around a corner. It's actually all really well handled.
And it's not just the sound, the environments are really well detailed. I liked how you could sort of use the camera to peer through windows to see locations in the mansion, turn around the camera to see details like where you came from before this area, see the Manor and how it turns more castle like towards the backside, see shiny roofs drop water, a tower ahead. Inside the mansion the detail continued. Also the environments were very destructible, I had some fun breakin cabinets and bottles and knocking over trash cans.
On destroying stuff, a comment. I was worried Sebastian having a melee button ala Dead Space would ruin the horror, that I could run and just melee enemies to take care of them, to save supplies and lessen their threat. This didn't work at all even on normal difficulty, I hit a single enemy something like 8-9 times and he had hardly flinched and during the time I was trying to melee him, and in less than 15 seconds had taken away all my health from full and killed me. However, killing enemies that carry weapons, they drop their weapons which you can then pick up and use. You can only carry one thing at a time, they can be effective melee weapons but their durability is low and they break very easily.
The game is also not easy. Mikami had said he thought survival-horror should be challenging, as that adds to the survival element, and wanted to make Evil Within a challenging game, and he was not kidding. Even on Normal difficulty, the game was noticeably a lot harder than the likes of Shadows of the Damned on Hard Mode or Dead Space on normal, and felt like somewhere between Resident Evil 4 on Nornal and Pro on difficulty. This was a later (9 of 16 or something like that) and keeping I mind I was adjusting the game, but the regular enemies are much tougher than Ganados or Majini. When they are downed, they sometimes will flail around and try to swipe and attack you if you get close to try and melee them. When they are downed, you cam burn the corpse woth a limited match and keresone. If you don't get a headshot or burn them, they have a chance to get back up as a much faster and stronger version of themselves, much like Crimson Heads.
The save rooms aren't really rooms, you hear music playing as follow it, and find a mirror that begins to start heavily glowing. You can hold a button to enter, and find yourself in a sort of 'hub' area. There's a nurse and a series of rooms, some rooms and whole areas I couldn't acces yet, and there were a variety of mirrors and glowing cracks throughout the hub I could use to return. Exploring around, there's a place to upgrade stuff with green gel, a series of locked doors to store bodies in a morgue which you can collect keys in the main game to unlock, there were files and creepy paintings, a prison cell area, and things that look like they may play importance at some point, but didn't in the demo (a gramophone and viewfinder, to name two). This seems to be a hub-like safe haven, which is different.
The game playing it really didn't feel like RE4. I know it looks like it and I think this is what people are expecting looking at it, but it plays so differently mechanically and atmospherically feels so different it honestly didn't feel like a follow-up to RE4. I can't quite put my finger yet on how to describe it, but take this from someone who has who thought it looked like RE4 in videos, it doesn't feel like RE4 playing it and honestly does have excellent anosphere, which I wasn't expecting. This is helped by being uncertain of what might be around the next corner, the fact the enemies are legit steely tough, the creepy sound and moody lighting, and a number of elements that keep you on your toes.
There were some randomized mood effects that happened when playing a few times. There was one time when a candle light flickered and went dark and back on again that never happened again I that room replaying it for me. There was a scene of a shadow eating something ahead of me and sounds that only happened once for me and never again (involving an enemy that was never there again in my six runs).
Ruvik also was panic-inducing. He's an invincible stalker that chase you as many may know. The screen gets a weir dark blue effect and this music begins playing, and you h e to either run or hide from him. He appeared in right corridor areas for me with multiple paths so I could never guess which way he was coming from.
I also saw the loading screens, and some of the tips were interesting, as well as load screens. My favorite was one involving different mannequins with tear marks under their eyes, things happen as the game loads, and so far didn't see a same load screen twice. Two interesting tips is that it mentioned the enemy with multiple arms and long black hair can be defeated, but it isn't recommended. Also a tip about making sure not to look at something.
---
Played the demo again a bit ago on the show floor, second go impressions.
---Second Try Impressions---
Got a lot further this time while playing, and this time played the Xbox One version.
Two things about the Xbox One version: It must be much more optimized right now. Load times were cut in half compared to the PS4 (15-25 seconds), and the frame rate didn't suffer at all, it looked a solid 30 FPS the whole time. But I noticed that the the game didn't look as sharp as the PS4 version and the audio was slightly different (if this makes any sense you can't hear things as far away as you can on PS4). I could hear the Save Room theme from across the hall for example on the PS4, but only in front of the door on the Xbox One. And there were other changes too, there was, in fact, music on the Xbox version. It didn't ruin anything as it was undertoned and creepy, but it leads me to believe the Xbox One version is better along than the PS4 version. Didn't even see any texture pop-in.
I also got a lot further this time, I got up the last puzzle before the door in the main entrance locked off when I ran out of time, but I did notice and observe some stuff this time.
The controls on Xbox One felt more regular. Not controller preference, I mean the tank control element was lightened some with walking around. Aiming felt the same, but moving around felt a lot more like you'd expect a TPS to move. I'm curious about why that is.
I managed to get a goddess key and open one of the morgue lockers. For a grenade (the ond-styled one I mentioned yesterday).
On the options screen I have found that you can in fact increase or decrease screen noise, so if you like it or dislike it you can change the percentage in the game to a lot or none.
I mentioned this on the EW forums but not NeoGAF, but there's a 'Show Partner Health' option I the HUD options, making me think there will be sections with you and another character.
Someone asked about volume on consoles. You can adjust everything's volumes; music, voices, sounds, cutscenes, are the four options.
A random note, The game has a lot of load screens. I have not seen the exact same load screen twice, though some variation (Ruvik is in the elevator, no Laura is the next time this screen pops up!) Also the game must have some big mannequin section or something. Two different load screens with mannequins. I saw this one today with baby mannequins. No idea what they have to so with the game as of yet, but they were sitting creepingly on the floor in a light in the dark room, the light would go off, and turn back and they'd be someplace else.
Ruvik scares me. He literally can appear at any time. I was fighting a few enemies in a room web suddenly in the middle of this Ruvik bursts through the door and suddenly his music and screen effect happened, and I was in a mighty inconvenient location to maneuver past him and the two enemies.
Getting headshots in the game is more challenging as the enemies bob their heads around and you need to shoot in a very specific spot, and I've found out Sebastian's accuracy when on low level with a weapon is horrendous. I've had shots with the pistol shoot over a foot in another direction of where I shot, so on low accuracy level the reticle box is actually more, 'the area your shot will actually land at'.
This may come as no surprise, but there are, in fact, some scripted enemy scenarios, so not all enemies are random.
The demo made me curious about some things. I was running through a hall and then heard this REALLY creepy clown laugh echoing through the halls, then suddenly all the enemies in the manor were all wearing clown masks. I have no idea what was up with that.
The puzzles here weren't hard but were interesting I will say. Some nice gothic inspiration behind them. Liked the painting puzzle.
I figured out how to set items to the d-pad, so that was nice. And to confirm something, your inventory slows down the game but doesn't stop it so you can still be hurt while using it.
There are two aiming modes, the proper aiming mode, and a 'free shoot' mode. The first aiming mode make the camera zoom in behind the shoulder, you move slower but shoot more precisely. How close behind the shoulder depends on the area you're in. Tight corridors will put it almost in a FPS mode, default is a bit closer than RE4, but not by much, sometimes more pulled back.
There seems to be a chance when you run out of stamina Sebastian will stop in his tracks and take 3-5 seconds to catch his breath. Again, mashing the X button makes this go faster, as does recharging stamina.
There are four areas to upgrade with green gel, yourself (health, stamina, etc), weapons, capacity, and the Agony Bolt. I had fun with the agony bolt today, the explosive bolts were fun.
On that, I hit an enemy with a explosive bolt, but it takes a few seconds to explode, enemy grabbed me and I exploded. Game confirmed to have dissection deaths, Sebastian literally exploded into pieces, but you could tell what all the pieces were. Happy to have Mikami deaths back after they left RE with RE5. Another one involves an enemy slitting your throat and blood purring out.
Speaking of blood. A fun blood splatter effect in this game. Killing enemies near blood or furniture will splatter blood on these that stick for a small bit. Killing an enemy close to you in a Corey fashion will have blood coat Sebastian for a few moments as well.
There was a hallway that wouldn't look out of place in Silent Hill that involved paintings with sections in them (that worked with the composition of the painting) that were turned into holes showing squirming, organic tissue inside.
Ran out of ammo for a while, and can say these enemies have it! By 'it', I mean that they're deadly, and have tricks, but you can run past them and avoid them, though they'll give more chase than zombies in the old RE game, you can outrun them and lure them to run past them I hallways.
That's about all I noticed in my play session, now for the event tonight! I suspect it'll be the same demo, but still excited.
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I'll have more impressions later from the 4-hour Bethesda Evil Within event, as so many people seem not to know what to think of the game I thought I might throw out first impressions from the demo. So far I mus say feels much different to play than to watch, an in a good way. Does feel like a horror game, unnerved me even though only scared me once so far. More of an uneasy feeling.
