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[Sephiroth_GR_]

Believe me, once you find out, you might get mad.....

lol no...the concept has been used plenty of times before in anime and movies.

 

[3rdamention]

Here's how the game was meant to be played

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WaG8xplgjic

No black bars, no cinematic bs, no 24 fps, no vaseline/duct tape and more importantly FIXED FOV, no 45 angle.

Link to fix (PC ONLY) is in the link

Inquery: for those who feel the lovely black bar that fills the screen is great, will you also use tape on your HDTV on the next game?

Lol, dear God, and cover up what was supposed to be seen with tape? It's a design choice, it's not ruining the experience for everybody..

 

[thehillissilent]

lol no...the concept has been used plenty of times before in anime and movies.

I know that. I just wished it wasn't what it was. I was mad because it was borrowed from those films/anime, etc

Spoiler

The Matrix x The Cell...really Mikami...really

 

[J Range]

I just started and am on chapter 2. I'm not a picky gamer at all but some of the performance issues are jarring. Walking right through your partners at the beginning, aliasing and some janky animations. I'm also wary of games that make me feel like I have to stealth kill everybody or I will be screwed, I do sort of like just shooting things.

Seems promising so far though, chapter 2 definitely is better than 1. It's hilarious to let them see you and then burn them with a haystack when they get so close to getting you and then sprinting away ha. The story doesn't bother me because honestly horror games are better off with no sensical stories.

 

[AdaWong]

Okay. This scene.

Spoiler

Where Joseph suddenly acts all bad and cool and takes the gun from Seb, out-of-nowhere he's hopeless and wants to end his life, "it's just a matter of time..." Joseph says as he point the gun towards his head.

Sebastian pushes him and the gun falls. Scene ends.


Literally not even one minute after this scene, Joseph is like "cover me I'm now suddenly(again) determined to get out of this alive! LEZ DO DIS!!11/"

Literally, wtf?

The plot and writing is obnoxiously bad and cheesy. Was that a reference to the original RE?


Chapter 5/6 were fun though.

 

[Demon Lizardman]

Man, I just looked at the synopsis for the story and man, who the fuck wrote this game?

 

[MikeE21286]

I've been completely black-out on this game until playing it yesterday but man that opening sequence is brutal

Feels like a combination of the first episode of Season of The Walking Dead, Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Hostel

 

[Ricker]

I just started and am on chapter 2. I'm not a picky gamer at all but some of the performance issues are jarring. Walking right through your partners at the beginning, aliasing and some janky animations. I'm also wary of games that make me feel like I have to stealth kill everybody or I will be screwed, I do sort of like just shooting things.

Seems promising so far though, chapter 2 definitely is better than 1. It's hilarious to let them see you and then burn them with a haystack when they get so close to getting you and then sprinting away ha. The story doesn't bother me because honestly horror games are better off with no sensical stories.

You will get your wish of shooting things fast enough man,dont worry lol...

 

[Jinjo]

The Evil Within is like Frankenstein's Monster. Powerful, confident, not much of a conversationalist, and obviously seamed together from a large variety of sources. It Lives, as the good doctor would say, but it helps to squint when you look at it and forgive its flaws.

The core game design is like B-tier Last of Us + Resident Evil 4. Sebastian, the main character, is a clumsy guy who sneaks verrrry slowly and has maybe 3 seconds of sprint before he has to stop and take a nap. Weapons are mostly standard: pistol, shotgun, rifle, grenades, etc with one rather unique one in the Crossbow. The Crossbow can be fitted with several different arrow types depending on the situation, such as Flash arrows for group stuns or Ice arrows that let you shatter most enemies with a single blow. Due to scarce resources and aforementioned clumsy guy status, TEW encourages exploring for goodies, stealth kills, and smart environmental utilization. If seven zombies show up, its probably best if you lure them into the proximity bomb trap instead of wasting precious ammo. Or maybe just run away! There are a variety of options, but even late in the game, you always one mistake away from eating a lot of damage or having to use up your weapons. Your initially weak state is the basis for an upgrade system that can really change how you approach the game. Do you try to get your sprint to non-pathetic levels immediately, or maybe push towards that valuable Crit Chance for your pistol? Its something you're always building towards throughout the entire game, slowly powering up but never quite becoming a super hero.

The game keeps you on your toes by never letting you get comfortable in any of its chapters. The narrative device of Ruvik, the main antagonist with mysterious powers natch, is like being trapped in the mind of Shinji Mikami, who indulges in all the various horror-themed level ideas he had lying around his head the past couple decades. As soon as you get through a night time, stealth version of the Village from RE4, you're whisked away to brightly lit big action chapters with an (surprisingly competent) AI buddy, climaxing with the grey ogres from RE4 in a tight cemetery. There's a stage where you have to get though a door with multiple keys, so you proceed to and fro through, killing enemies and avoiding traps while big boss guy randomly stalks like the Krauser fight from RE4. There's a boss that soaks up damage from your regular weapons, so its much better to use the red barrels and lever-pulling traps around the environment to kill it like RE4. Ok so clearly The Evil Within won't win points for originality, but even if Mikami is simply shuffling his deck of greatest hits, the game is filled with good ideas for level and encounter design, leading to a game with strong, varied pacing throughout its lengthy runtime.

The presentation is a mixed bag. On one hand, TEW has a great art design throughout. Mental hospitals and ancient tombs alike employ spectacular lighting effects filled with ominous dust particles. The large variety of enemies all look wonderfully evil, and the gore upon their deaths are simply spectacular, in the truest sense of the word. On the other hand however, the game is under 30fps more times than isn't, and has a really narrow FOV that, when combined with its "cinematic" letterboxing, tight camera placement, somewhat janky animations and finicky contextual interactions, it can definitely pull you out the experience.

I haven't mentioned the story because there isn't much of one. The characters all speak in clipped, stilted sentences with a early PS2 "translated from Japanese to English" cadence. They have an detached emotional distance to all the wacky events, which in combination with the lack of clear motivations or strong narrative drive leaves the story fragmented and enigmatic. Worse yet, because of the haphazard jumping around, it leaves the environments feeling more like theme park ride attractions than real, tangible places you backtrack through like RE1's mansion or the castle from RE4.

But its quite the theme park ride if you can get on-board. The Evil Within is a sharply designed action game, delivering a variety of horror-themed thrills to those who can look past its B-movie jank and derivative nature.

Spoiler

8/10

tl;dr version:
+Strong core game design that balances stealth/survival elements with big visceral action
+Stuffed with good, if unoriginal, ideas for level and encounter design, strong and varied pacing for a 12+ hour action game
+Art design is fantastic...
-...if you can get past the layers of B-game jankery and idtech5 failures
-Story is ***_****** tier
-Not even a little scary. Like, at all.

Thanks for the blatant setpiece and boss spoilers dude.

 

[The Xtortionist]

The narrative device of Ruvik, the main antagonist with mysterious powers natch, is like being trapped in the mind of Shinji Mikami, who indulges in all the various horror-themed level ideas he had lying around his head the past couple decades.

I also made up my own theory about the themes of the story. Only up to chapter 7 so don't spoil me when i'm wrong.

Spoiler

Sebastian is the player. Ruvik is Mikami. Ruvik /Mikami leading us through this hellscape of twisted encounters because that's what we fucking want. We're in his world. Is it all a dream? Who gives a shit, like Dumbledore said in Deathly Hallows Part 2 "Of course it's happening inside your head Harry. But that doesn't mean it isn't real". It's about the journey, not the destination.

Aw yiss, I'm not crazy.

 

[FonkyByNature]

The Evil Within is like Frankenstein's Monster. Powerful, confident, not much of a conversationalist, and obviously seamed together from a large variety of sources. It Lives, as the good doctor would say, but it helps to squint when you look at it and forgive its flaws.

The core game design is like B-tier Last of Us + Resident Evil 4. Sebastian, the main character, is a clumsy guy who sneaks verrrry slowly and has maybe 3 seconds of sprint before he has to stop and take a nap. Weapons are mostly standard: pistol, shotgun, rifle, grenades, etc with one rather unique one in the Crossbow. The Crossbow can be fitted with several different arrow types depending on the situation, such as Flash arrows for group stuns or Ice arrows that let you shatter most enemies with a single blow. Due to scarce resources and aforementioned clumsy guy status, TEW encourages exploring for goodies, stealth kills, and smart environmental utilization. If seven zombies show up, its probably best if you lure them into the proximity bomb trap instead of wasting precious ammo. Or maybe just run away! There are a variety of options, but even late in the game, you always one mistake away from eating a lot of damage or having to use up your weapons. Your initially weak state is the basis for an upgrade system that can really change how you approach the game. Do you try to get your sprint to non-pathetic levels immediately, or maybe push towards that valuable Crit Chance for your pistol? Its something you're always building towards throughout the entire game, slowly powering up but never quite becoming a super hero.

The game keeps you on your toes by never letting you get comfortable in any of its chapters. The narrative device of Ruvik, the main antagonist with mysterious powers natch, is like being trapped in the mind of Shinji Mikami, who indulges in all the various horror-themed level ideas he had lying around his head the past couple decades. As soon as you get through a night time, stealth version of the Village from RE4, you're whisked away to brightly lit big action chapters with an (surprisingly competent) AI buddy, climaxing with the grey ogres from RE4 in a tight cemetery. There's a stage where you have to get though a door with multiple keys, so you proceed to and fro through, killing enemies and avoiding traps while big boss guy randomly stalks like the Krauser fight from RE4. There's a boss that soaks up damage from your regular weapons, so its much better to use the red barrels and lever-pulling traps around the environment to kill it like RE4. Ok so clearly The Evil Within won't win points for originality, but even if Mikami is simply shuffling his deck of greatest hits, the game is filled with good ideas for level and encounter design, leading to a game with strong, varied pacing throughout its lengthy runtime.

The presentation is a mixed bag. On one hand, TEW has a great art design throughout. Mental hospitals and ancient tombs alike employ spectacular lighting effects filled with ominous dust particles. The large variety of enemies all look wonderfully evil, and the gore upon their deaths are simply spectacular, in the truest sense of the word. On the other hand however, the game is under 30fps more times than isn't, and has a really narrow FOV that, when combined with its "cinematic" letterboxing, tight camera placement, somewhat janky animations and finicky contextual interactions, it can definitely pull you out the experience.

I haven't mentioned the story because there isn't much of one. The characters all speak in clipped, stilted sentences with a early PS2 "translated from Japanese to English" cadence. They have an detached emotional distance to all the wacky events, which in combination with the lack of clear motivations or strong narrative drive leaves the story fragmented and enigmatic. Worse yet, because of the haphazard jumping around, it leaves the environments feeling more like theme park ride attractions than real, tangible places you backtrack through like RE1's mansion or the castle from RE4.

But its quite the theme park ride if you can get on-board. The Evil Within is a sharply designed action game, delivering a variety of horror-themed thrills to those who can look past its B-movie jank and derivative nature.

Spoiler

8/10

tl;dr version:
+Strong core game design that balances stealth/survival elements with big visceral action
+Stuffed with good, if unoriginal, ideas for level and encounter design, strong and varied pacing for a 12+ hour action game
+Art design is fantastic...
-...if you can get past the layers of B-game jankery and idtech5 failures
-Story is ***_****** tier
-Not even a little scary. Like, at all.

Great review and sums up exactly how i feel about the game. The bolded part made me laugh !! Sebastian probably never been into sports...

 

[kodecraft]

The Evil Within is like Frankenstein's Monster. Powerful, confident, not much of a conversationalist, and obviously seamed together from a large variety of sources. It Lives, as the good doctor would say, but it helps to squint when you look at it and forgive its flaws.

The core game design is like B-tier Last of Us + Resident Evil 4. Sebastian, the main character, is a clumsy guy who sneaks verrrry slowly and has maybe 3 seconds of sprint before he has to stop and take a nap. Weapons are mostly standard: pistol, shotgun, rifle, grenades, etc with one rather unique one in the Crossbow. The Crossbow can be fitted with several different arrow types depending on the situation, such as Flash arrows for group stuns or Ice arrows that let you shatter most enemies with a single blow. Due to scarce resources and aforementioned clumsy guy status, TEW encourages exploring for goodies, stealth kills, and smart environmental utilization. If seven zombies show up, its probably best if you lure them into the proximity bomb trap instead of wasting precious ammo. Or maybe just run away! There are a variety of options, but even late in the game, you always one mistake away from eating a lot of damage or having to use up your weapons. Your initially weak state is the basis for an upgrade system that can really change how you approach the game. Do you try to get your sprint to non-pathetic levels immediately, or maybe push towards that valuable Crit Chance for your pistol? Its something you're always building towards throughout the entire game, slowly powering up but never quite becoming a super hero.

The game keeps you on your toes by never letting you get comfortable in any of its chapters. The narrative device of Ruvik, the main antagonist with mysterious powers natch, is like being trapped in the mind of Shinji Mikami, who indulges in all the various horror-themed level ideas he had lying around his head the past couple decades. As soon as you get through a night time, stealth version of the Village from RE4, you're whisked away to brightly lit big action chapters with an (surprisingly competent) AI buddy, climaxing with the grey ogres from RE4 in a tight cemetery. There's a stage where you have to get though a door with multiple keys, so you proceed to and fro through, killing enemies and avoiding traps while big boss guy randomly stalks like the Krauser fight from RE4. There's a boss that soaks up damage from your regular weapons, so its much better to use the red barrels and lever-pulling traps around the environment to kill it like RE4. Ok so clearly The Evil Within won't win points for originality, but even if Mikami is simply shuffling his deck of greatest hits, the game is filled with good ideas for level and encounter design, leading to a game with strong, varied pacing throughout its lengthy runtime.

The presentation is a mixed bag. On one hand, TEW has a great art design throughout. Mental hospitals and ancient tombs alike employ spectacular lighting effects filled with ominous dust particles. The large variety of enemies all look wonderfully evil, and the gore upon their deaths are simply spectacular, in the truest sense of the word. On the other hand however, the game is under 30fps more times than isn't, and has a really narrow FOV that, when combined with its "cinematic" letterboxing, tight camera placement, somewhat janky animations and finicky contextual interactions, it can definitely pull you out the experience.

I haven't mentioned the story because there isn't much of one. The characters all speak in clipped, stilted sentences with a early PS2 "translated from Japanese to English" cadence. They have an detached emotional distance to all the wacky events, which in combination with the lack of clear motivations or strong narrative drive leaves the story fragmented and enigmatic. Worse yet, because of the haphazard jumping around, it leaves the environments feeling more like theme park ride attractions than real, tangible places you backtrack through like RE1's mansion or the castle from RE4.

But its quite the theme park ride if you can get on-board. The Evil Within is a sharply designed action game, delivering a variety of horror-themed thrills to those who can look past its B-movie jank and derivative nature.

Spoiler

8/10

tl;dr version:
+Strong core game design that balances stealth/survival elements with big visceral action
+Stuffed with good, if unoriginal, ideas for level and encounter design, strong and varied pacing for a 12+ hour action game
+Art design is fantastic...
-...if you can get past the layers of B-game jankery and idtech5 failures
-Story is ***_****** tier
-Not even a little scary. Like, at all.

Haha, dude you purposely gave away alot of info, this isn't the spoiler thread.

I laugh because you have been on a roll around here and remain untouched.

But for how long?

 

[antitrop]

Man, I just looked at the synopsis for the story and man, who the fuck wrote this game?

Vanquish has a better story.

 

[SargerusBR]

I actually kinda liked the story, guess i have low standards then

 

[Videad]

Hi, I pre-order the ps3 version. I tried to redeem the fighting chance pack code but, the code is for the ps4 system and does't work in my ps3. What can I do?

 

[DukeBobby]

Vanquish has a better story.

I wouldn't go that far.

 

[-MD-]

Vanquish has a better story.

I can't remember a single thing about Vanquish's story outside of the main character smoking a cigarette.

The gameplay was great but the story wasn't memorable at all.

 

[swazzyswess]

I love how people are like, "This game's story is like a B movie, uuughhh!!!11" Were you even paying attention during RE4 for god's sake?

 

[Stone Ocean]

Believe me, once you find out, you might get mad.....

By chapter 3 I already have a general idea of what they're going for.

Spoiler

It's some sort of Alan Wake style delusional-but-not-really bullshit, isn't it?

I love how people are like, "This game's story is like a B movie, uuughhh!!!11" Were you even paying attention during RE4 for god's sake?

"Zombie killing police veteran trying to save the president's daughter from spanish-speaking zombie-terrorist-cult" is truly the pillar of storytelling.

 

[Lan Dong Mik]

The Evil Within is like Frankenstein's Monster. Powerful, confident, not much of a conversationalist, and obviously seamed together from a large variety of sources. It Lives, as the good doctor would say, but it helps to squint when you look at it and forgive its flaws.

The core game design is like B-tier Last of Us + Resident Evil 4. Sebastian, the main character, is a clumsy guy who sneaks verrrry slowly and has maybe 3 seconds of sprint before he has to stop and take a nap. Weapons are mostly standard: pistol, shotgun, rifle, grenades, etc with one rather unique one in the Crossbow. The Crossbow can be fitted with several different arrow types depending on the situation, such as Flash arrows for group stuns or Ice arrows that let you shatter most enemies with a single blow. Due to scarce resources and aforementioned clumsy guy status, TEW encourages exploring for goodies, stealth kills, and smart environmental utilization. If seven zombies show up, its probably best if you lure them into the proximity bomb trap instead of wasting precious ammo. Or maybe just run away! There are a variety of options, but even late in the game, you always one mistake away from eating a lot of damage or having to use up your weapons. Your initially weak state is the basis for an upgrade system that can really change how you approach the game. Do you try to get your sprint to non-pathetic levels immediately, or maybe push towards that valuable Crit Chance for your pistol? Its something you're always building towards throughout the entire game, slowly powering up but never quite becoming a super hero.

The game keeps you on your toes by never letting you get comfortable in any of its chapters. The narrative device of Ruvik, the main antagonist with mysterious powers natch, is like being trapped in the mind of Shinji Mikami, who indulges in all the various horror-themed level ideas he had lying around his head the past couple decades. As soon as you get through a night time, stealth version of the Village from RE4, you're whisked away to brightly lit big action chapters with an (surprisingly competent) AI buddy, climaxing with the grey ogres from RE4 in a tight cemetery. There's a stage where you have to get though a door with multiple keys, so you proceed to and fro through, killing enemies and avoiding traps while big boss guy randomly stalks like the Krauser fight from RE4. There's a boss that soaks up damage from your regular weapons, so its much better to use the red barrels and lever-pulling traps around the environment to kill it like RE4. Ok so clearly The Evil Within won't win points for originality, but even if Mikami is simply shuffling his deck of greatest hits, the game is filled with good ideas for level and encounter design, leading to a game with strong, varied pacing throughout its lengthy runtime.

The presentation is a mixed bag. On one hand, TEW has a great art design throughout. Mental hospitals and ancient tombs alike employ spectacular lighting effects filled with ominous dust particles. The large variety of enemies all look wonderfully evil, and the gore upon their deaths are simply spectacular, in the truest sense of the word. On the other hand however, the game is under 30fps more times than isn't, and has a really narrow FOV that, when combined with its "cinematic" letterboxing, tight camera placement, somewhat janky animations and finicky contextual interactions, it can definitely pull you out the experience.

I haven't mentioned the story because there isn't much of one. The characters all speak in clipped, stilted sentences with a early PS2 "translated from Japanese to English" cadence. They have an detached emotional distance to all the wacky events, which in combination with the lack of clear motivations or strong narrative drive leaves the story fragmented and enigmatic. Worse yet, because of the haphazard jumping around, it leaves the environments feeling more like theme park ride attractions than real, tangible places you backtrack through like RE1's mansion or the castle from RE4.

But its quite the theme park ride if you can get on-board. The Evil Within is a sharply designed action game, delivering a variety of horror-themed thrills to those who can look past its B-movie jank and derivative nature.

Spoiler

8/10

tl;dr version:
+Strong core game design that balances stealth/survival elements with big visceral action
+Stuffed with good, if unoriginal, ideas for level and encounter design, strong and varied pacing for a 12+ hour action game
+Art design is fantastic...
-...if you can get past the layers of B-game jankery and idtech5 failures
-Story is ***_****** tier
-Not even a little scary. Like, at all.

I'm sorry but saying this game is not even a little scary is such a load of crap. I don't buy that for a second. I'm only up to chapter 5 but chapters 3 and 4 were intense and pretty fucking scary imo and I play almost all survival horror games I can get my hands on. Aside from that comment I do agree with the rest of this review though.

 

[-tetsuo-]

I just love how the game doesn't even care to explain to you what is going on lol

 

[xrayregime]

Resident Evil 4 had so much background to it that the B-movie aspects are forgotten about. Leon is such a strong and well-liked character, as well as the series already having five previous games in the series to build up a canonical lore, that people can read into the game however they want.

Spoiler

It's for sure a cheese-fest, though...and I love it.

 

[antitrop]

I love how people are like, "This game's story is like a B movie, uuughhh!!!11" Were you even paying attention during RE4 for god's sake?

Resident Evil 4's story, characters, and dialogue are better in every way.

 

[Sayad]

Okay. This scene.

Spoiler

Where Joseph suddenly acts all bad and cool and takes the gun from Seb, out-of-nowhere he's hopeless and wants to end his life, "it's just a matter of time..." Joseph says as he point the gun towards his head.

Sebastian pushes him and the gun falls. Scene ends.


Literally not even one minute after this scene, Joseph is like "cover me I'm now suddenly(again) determined to get out of this alive! LEZ DO DIS!!11/"

Literally, wtf?

The plot and writing is obnoxiously bad and cheesy. Was that a reference to the original RE?


Chapter 5/6 were fun though.

And Joseph lines are especially bad, though there are instances where you learn about the plot through the environment and documents which I thought was pretty nice. But yea, generally the plot is meh, and the script feels like a bad translation job... Not implying that it might be any better in its original language.

 

[Stone Ocean]

Resident Evil 4's story, characters, and dialogue are better in every way.

There's that though.

RE4 is a B-movie plot with a Hollywoodian budget
Evil Within is a B-movie plot with a B-movie budget

Not that there's anything wrong with it, love me some B-movie jankyness.

 

[antitrop]

There's that though.

RE4 is a B-movie plot with a Hollywoodian budget
Evil Within is a B-movie plot with a B-movie budget

Not that there's anything wrong with it, love me some B-movie jankyness.

Even just comparing the narrative collectibles (like the newspapers in the Nurse's Office) to the ones in Wolfenstein makes The Evil Within look absurdly amateur.

In Wolfenstein, you get all these interesting retro-sci fi alternate history newspaper clippings that detail the Nazis rise to power after World War II.

In The Evil Within you get a journal with a few brief, cryptic lines about Sebastian's mostly irellevent past or references to some minor character.

 

[swazzyswess]

Resident Evil 4's story, characters, and dialogue are better in every way.

They're still undeniably bargain basement quality compared to any other medium though. Vanquish's story and characters are ridiculous too. Name something Mikami has been involved with where the story ISN'T like that.

My expectation was that TEW's story would be ridiculous as hell and it's been met so far. I couldn't muster a serious, intellectual critique of it even if I wanted to.

 

[Northeastmonk]

There's that though.

RE4 is a B-movie plot with a Hollywoodian budget
Evil Within is a B-movie plot with a B-movie budget

Not that there's anything wrong with it, love me some B-movie jankyness.

You're one cold dude. If it was a B movie everything would be out of focus. You are almost always being panned to a cinematic sequence. You are taking for granted being able to control the character within the environment. It looks that way for realism. Drake from Uncharted has a similar feel.

Your B movie is what we typically enjoyed from video games, but you've turned it into what you believe makes a script modern or believable. This is outrageous.

 

[Fancy Clown]

Resident Evil 4 had so much background to it that the B-movie aspects are forgotten about. Leon is such a strong and well-liked character, as well as the series already having five previous games in the series to build up a canonical lore, that people can read into the game however they want.

Spoiler

It's for sure a cheese-fest, though...and I love it.

Leon is not a strong character...nor are any of the Resident Evil characters. They are all incredibly one dimensional. He goes from 'well meaning rookie cop who falls in love with sexy spy' in one game, and then 'bad-ass, sarcastic dude' in the next.

 

[SlasherJPC]

I can't remember a single thing about Vanquish's story outside of the main character smoking a cigarette.

The gameplay was great but the story wasn't memorable at all.

Honestly... story in games have always been fairly lack luster. Even TLoU story is nothng to write home about, it's the characters that make it so damn good. I view story in most games and getting me from point a to point z. If it keeps me engaged enough to go..."What will happen next" Good enough. When I stop caring to proceed or the gameplay is stilted enough to not provide itself enough reason to go on. I take issue. Vanquish, RE4, TEW... all had interesting... how will this end, what is really going on plots. Though the actually stories themselves could be sumed up in a sentence or two. I still claim, if you come to videogames looking for in depth plots, your in the wrong entertainment field.

 

[antitrop]

They're still undeniably bargain basement quality compared to any other medium though. Vanquish's story and characters are ridiculous too. Name something Mikami has been involved with where the story ISN'T like that.

My expectation was that TEW's story would be ridiculous as hell and they've been met so far. I couldn't muster a serious, intellectual critique of it even if I wanted to.

I agree with you.

I'm trying to make a point of just how terrible I feel like TEW's story is by saying that it's worse than pretty much some of the worst the medium has to offer in storytelling.

The Evil Within deserves a better story, though, while I feel like Vanquish's shit plot was more acceptable because it's a pure balls to the wall arcade game.

Straight up, Vanquish does a better job with characterization of Sam Gideon and Col. Burns in it's opening chapters than The Evil Within does. That boggles my mind.

 

[Krusenstern]

Thanks for the blatant setpiece and boss spoilers dude.

Good thing I stopped reading after 2 sentences. He should spoiler tag that.

 

[Sephiroth_GR_]

Even just comparing the narrative collectibles (like the newspapers in the Nurse's Office) to the ones in Wolfenstein makes The Evil Within look absurdly amateur.

In Wolfenstein, you get all these interesting retro-sci fi alternate history newspaper clippings that detail the Nazis rise to power after World War II.

In The Evil Within you get a journal with a few brief, cryptic lines about Sebastian's mostly irellevent past or references to some minor character.

Are you early in the game?

 

[swazzyswess]

I'm trying to make a point of just how terrible I feel like TEW's story is by saying that it's worse than pretty much some of the worst the medium has to offer in storytelling.

Fair enough. I haven't finished the game yet, so I suppose something truly terrible could still happen, but I can't imagine myself being let down by the story too much. It seems like it mostly exists to string the player along to new environments, which I'm okay with (so far).

 

[SlasherJPC]

Also been playing the PS3 version. For using idtech and the issues it had on RAGE (aka horrible) I'm actually a bit surprised how well is runs on ps3 (granted it's still the worst out of them all) Still very playable. Got to chapter 4 last night on there. Obviously PC is the winner though.

 

[ViewtifulJC]

Aw yiss, I'm not crazy.

I swear I didn't read this post before I typed that

Vanquish has a better story.

Damn

RE4 at the very least it had clear dramatic stakes and character motivations, and a lot of (most of it unintentionally) campy dialog thats still pretty quotable. The big environments that you spend a lot of time in do a lot of the heavy lifting.

With TEW its like...its just one random cool idea for a horror-flavored action game after another. The characters are all stale, there's no real momentum to anything since it just kinda jumps around without really establishing much of anything. You're here, and then you're there, and then some other place just because Ruvik/Mikami wanted to do something else now. Characters appear and disappear randomly. Somebody died and I didn't know until somebody mentioned they were dead later. Its more of a context than a story, really.

 

[xrayregime]

Leon is not a strong character...nor are any of the Resident Evil characters. They are all incredibly one dimensional. He goes from 'well meaning rookie cop who falls in love with sexy spy' in one game, and then 'bad-ass, sarcastic dude' in the next.

Well it's not so much that he is presented that way in-game at all. It's the fans who grew up with the series who built up these stories behind the characters. You're right, they're all one-dimensional, but the series and the fans built them all into something more. Why was there a thread on gaf about how shitty Claire looks in Revelaitons 2? There's something about the series that drives people to LOVE these one-dimensional characters. That's what I meant by strong.

Sebastian Castellanos (sp?) gains none of that benefit, even though he's no more one-dimensional than a RE character.

 

[PensivePen]

Are you early in the game?

I'm up to chapter 11 and his past has had almost no role in the story so far. While I'm sure there will be some revelation at the end with it, that really can't save it from making him a boring nothing character through the majority of the game.

 

[Sephiroth_GR_]

I'm up to chapter 11 and his past has had almost no role in the story so far. While I'm sure there will be some revelation at the end with it, that really can't save it from making him a boring nothing character through the majority of the game.

Sebastian as a character is indeed boring but he has a past and maybe we'll get some answers at the DLC or maybe The Evil Within 2

 

[-tetsuo-]

Leon is not a strong character...nor are any of the Resident Evil characters. They are all incredibly one dimensional. He goes from 'well meaning rookie cop who falls in love with sexy spy' in one game, and then 'bad-ass, sarcastic dude' in the next.

Leon is the strongest character.

 

[PensivePen]

Review

Basically my thoughts on the game pretty well summed up. The lack of memorable characters and environments, and just completely uninteresting story are the biggest downsides for me. RE4's plot is bad, but Evil Within's is much worse, it's boring. I'll still replay the game to enjoy the incredibly well-crafted gameplay scenarios, but I have no desire to ever watch the cutscenes or read the files again. Which is a shame, because I could play RE4 or REmake right now, and whether I skipped the story or not I would thoroughly enjoy myself the entire time (can't say the same for Vanquish though, but at least Sam in that has some kind of personality).

I should probably go finish the game soon.

 

[rapid32.5]

the nurse is called Tatiana, love little details like that put into games.

 

[SlasherJPC]

Basically my thoughts on the game pretty well summed up. The lack of memorable characters and environments, and just completely uninteresting story are the biggest downsides for me. RE4's plot is bad, but Evil Within's is much worse, it's boring. I'll still replay the game to enjoy the incredibly well-crafted gameplay scenarios, but I have no desire to ever watch the cutscenes or read the files again. Which is a shame, because I could play RE4 or REmake right now, and whether I skipped the story or not I would thoroughly enjoy myself the entire time (can't say the same for Vanquish though, but at least Sam in that has some kind of personality).
.

I thought the game had a ton of great enviroments. Interesting indeed. I thought Alien was polarizing but I think TEW is even moreso.

 

[-MD-]

I thought the game had a ton of great enviroments. Interesting indeed. I thought Alien was polarizing but I think TEW is even moreso.

Yeah the environments are one of the game's strongest suits. Tons of memorable areas in this game.

 

[SlasherJPC]

Well it's not so much that he is presented that way in-game at all. It's the fans who grew up with the series who built up these stories behind the characters. You're right, they're all one-dimensional, but the series and the fans built them all into something more. Why was there a thread on gaf about how shitty Claire looks in Revelaitons 2? There's something about the series that drives people to LOVE these one-dimensional characters. That's what I meant by strong.

Sebastian Castellanos (sp?) gains none of that benefit, even though he's no more one-dimensional than a RE character.

Give him a multi part series with spin off, etc. Gotta give fans time to give them characters depth.

 

[hospitaldriver]

Really starting to lose patience with this now.

Im on chapter 6

Spoiler

the fight with the devil dog

the combat and movement of the main character is shit. Even Resident Evil 6 did it better than this.

The fov is also a massive problem during that part of the game.

 

[PensivePen]

I thought the game had a ton of great enviroments. Interesting indeed. I thought Alien was polarizing but I think TEW is even moreso.

The environments look really good and are well designed, but I don't think they're very memorable. Like, I know the layout of the Spencer Mansion by heart, I can recite the year it was built, by whom, who funded it, for what purpose. It's such a well realized location because the game is centered around that. And I'm not alone in that feeling. Shadow Moses in Metal Gear Solid is a place that evokes similar feelings from people. Or Brookhaven hospital in Silent Hill.

But is anybody ever gonna remember or care about the whatever it's called asylum in Evil Within? I really doubt it.

 

[antitrop]

Yeah the environments are one of the game's strongest suits. Tons of memorable areas in this game.

Yeah, clearly all of the characterization went into The Haunted and the environments, themselves.

This game isn't about Sebastian, really. Almost in the same way that the Silent Hill games are more about the town.
But comparing Evil Within to Silent Hill makes me feel icky, because SH outclasses it in every non-gameplay way.

 

[SargerusBR]

All this talk about Vanquish made me realize Sebastian and Sam do very much look alike

 

[ViewtifulJC]

Its got a lot of varied environments with some wonderful lighting and encourages exploration, its just the game kinda blows through them haphazardly that you never get a great feel for them. There's practically zero backtracking, or looking at a map and remembering how to get back to use this new key for that door and open a new area. Its very much like a more traditional action game in that regard, with "stages" you go through.