• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Shinji Mikami's THE EVIL WITHIN |OT| Where's everyone going? Tango?

D

DoktorEvil

Banned
Neiteio said:
In that case, I think I'd start fresh out of all ammo, lol. But each chapter has the necessary amount of ammo lying around early on, iirc. I want to show this to friends, but I wonder which chapter would offer the best vertical slice (and most crowd-pleasing thrills!). It's like TLOU, where a 30-min demonstration can't possibly do the journey justice.
Click to expand...

Chapter 9 was used for the E3 demo. That's a decent start.

That or chapter 3 or 4 with the invisible enemies.
 
T

The Xtortionist

Member
Chapter 9 might be a little dicey if mistakes are made around
Ruvik
.

Chapter 10's grinder room fight is pretty thrilling, both mechanically and visually. Same with the
Laura
fight.
 
SRTtoZ

SRTtoZ

Member
33-Hit-Combo said:
I've just met my first invisible enemy, how do you see them without getting caught? I ran around the room until they lunged, then quickly did a scatter shot with the shotgun and melee'd everywhere!
Click to expand...

The cheap way is to aim your xbow and when you see the arc stop you know you're pointing at an enemy.
 
K

kodecraft

Member
Neiteio said:
I tried this but couldn't get the stealth kill prompt to appear
Click to expand...


It doesn't, so as soon as you flash them, immediately press crouch and the attack button.

So that's why I do with large crowds, I can take 4 of them out just with stealth kills, both front and back.
 
F

Fancy Clown

Member
Neiteio said:
I just posted a thread that is a love letter to TEW and its game balance.
Click to expand...

Excellent thread, dude. The game balance is one of my favorite parts of the game. Mikami wasn't kidding in one of his interviews when he said they played the sections over and over again a ridiculous amount of times to fine tune them, because everything from ammo drops, to encounters, to the upgrades, to bosses is fantastically balanced for providing a tough but fair experience.
 
N

Neiteio

Member
Fancy Clown said:
Excellent thread, dude. The game balance is one of my favorite parts of the game. Mikami wasn't kidding in one of his interviews when he said they played the sections over and over again a ridiculous amount of times to fine tune them, because everything from ammo drops, to encounters, to the upgrades, to bosses is fantastically balanced for providing a tough but fair experience.
Click to expand...
I'm not surprised that's what it took. The balance feels fine-tuned to perfection.
 
C

Curufinwe

Member
Finished in 21 hours with 75 deaths.

The first thing I noticed in the model viewer is that someone at Tango loves their women super skinny. Kidman and the Nurse both have BMI's in the underweight category.
 
F

Fancy Clown

Member
Maaaaaan stuck on a part in chapter 6 on Nightmare for like 2 hours. Defeating the
three turrets and massive hordes of enemies
without any checkpoints is hard enough, and for some reason Ive been getting hit with a massive amount of glitches:
Joseph walked into a trip trap twice and got himself killed after I
beat all three turrets
causing me to reset, and one time I killed all three but then for some reason there one of them didn't dissapear and was half invisible and the guy inside was invincible. And then I took a spike to the head and died.

Very, very frustrating. Nightmare has made some stuff a lot better (like chapter 2-4) but I feel like some of the more combat heavy encounters suffer a little as they really highlight some of the more finicky aspects of the game like the match mechanic, and I've been getting more glitches than my survival run for some reason. Overall it's definitely a challenge and clearly has some cool effort put into it with the remixed encounters, but I think the game was better balanced on survival mostly because the game seems designed around the haunted movement speed on that difficulty.
 
-MD-

-MD-

Member
Fancy Clown said:
Maaaaaan stuck on a part in chapter 6 on Nightmare for like 2 hours. Defeating the
three turrets and massive hordes of enemies
without any checkpoints is hard enough, and for some reason Ive been getting hit with a massive amount of glitches:
Joseph walked into a trip trap twice and got himself killed after I
beat all three turrets
causing me to reset, and one time I killed all three but then for some reason there one of them didn't dissapear and was half invisible and the guy inside was invincible. And then I took a spike to the head and died.

Very, very frustrating. Nightmare has made some stuff a lot better (like chapter 2-4) but I feel like some of the more combat heavy encounters suffer a little as they really highlight some of the more finicky aspects of the game like the match mechanic, and I've been getting more glitches than my survival run for some reason. Overall it's definitely a challenge and clearly has some cool effort put into it with the remixed encounters, but I think the game was better balanced on survival mostly because the game seems designed around the haunted movement speed on that difficulty.
Click to expand...


I don't think I've ever seen Joseph walk into a trip wire lol that's unfortunate. I actually died more on my initial survival playthrough than I did on my nightmare run but there were a couple tough spots on nightmare that had me restarting a few times, never felt unbalanced though.

Wish there was a difficulty beyond nightmare that was even stricter on resources and played around with encounters even further but without the one hit kill that akumu brings.
 
F

Fancy Clown

Member
-MD- said:
I don't think I've ever seen Joseph walk into a trip wire lol that's unfortunate. I actually died more on my initial survival playthrough than I did on my nightmare run but there were a couple tough spots on nightmare that had me restarting a few times, never felt unbalanced though.

Wish there was a difficulty beyond nightmare that was even stricter on resources and played around with encounters even further but without the one hit kill that akumu brings.
Click to expand...

Yeah, three times I beat that encounter and three times a glitch caused me to fail. Very strange, as I had nothing of that magnitude happen to me on my first run.

You are clearly much better at this game than I am because I'm dying waaaaaay more on nightmare than I did on survival haha.

I was really enjoying nightmare until this part, and I'm sure it'll go back to being fun after I get past it. I'm just very soured on this section at the moment haha. Shame too, because this is one of my favorite encounters of the game. Really good level design.
 
D

Dalek

Member
Just finished chapter 11 and had a hell of a time...I was near empty on ammo the entire time. I get to the part where you reunite with Kidman, but have to clear out a room of enemies before hand. I shit you not, all I had was one freeze bolt and a sniper rife bullet left. I died a couple of times, and was about to reset the chapter when I had a crazy idea. I waited until the enemies saw me and all charged in a line, took aim with my rifle and killed the one in front. Immediately started jamming on the O button and I dropped a match to ignite it's corpse and it lit all the others on fire and killed them. Fucking awesome.
 
N

Neiteio

Member
Dalek said:
Just finished chapter 11 and had a hell of a time...I was near empty on ammo the entire time. I get to the part where you reunite with Kidman, but have to clear out a room of enemies before hand. I shit you not, all I had was one freeze bolt and a sniper rife bullet left. I died a couple of times, and was about to reset the chapter when I had a crazy idea. I waited until the enemies saw me and all charged in a line, took aim with my rifle and killed the one in front. Immediately started jamming on the O button and I dropped a match to ignite it's corpse and it lit all the others on fire and killed them. Fucking awesome.
Click to expand...
Moments like that are why I love this game. :)
 
M

mattp

Member
Dalek said:
Just finished chapter 11 and had a hell of a time...I was near empty on ammo the entire time. I get to the part where you reunite with Kidman, but have to clear out a room of enemies before hand. I shit you not, all I had was one freeze bolt and a sniper rife bullet left. I died a couple of times, and was about to reset the chapter when I had a crazy idea. I waited until the enemies saw me and all charged in a line, took aim with my rifle and killed the one in front. Immediately started jamming on the O button and I dropped a match to ignite it's corpse and it lit all the others on fire and killed them. Fucking awesome.
Click to expand...

this is what the share button + 15min buffer is made for
 
B

BIONIC-ARRRMMM!!

Member
Curufinwe said:
Is grinding chapter 3 the best way to quickly get green gel in NG+? I still need to upgrade the magnum and the rifle.
Click to expand...

That's what I did.

Turns out there was a secret Easter egg in that chapter that involves shooting crows that gives you a 100,000 green gel puddle right by the exit. Being the extremely lucky person that I am, I only saw that trick when I already grinded away everything for three hours. I don't have a link handy, but it was posted in this thread, it was a twitch.tv link.
 
C

Curufinwe

Member
Thanks, I'll try it later tonight.

After a dozen runs on ch 3 I finally saw the Madonna while climbing up to the tree house.

I don't think I even found half of the statues during my first playthru even though I took my time and looked out for them. I think I just suck at finding hidden items.
 
N

Neiteio

Member
BIONIC-ARRRMMM!! said:
That's what I did.

Turns out there was a secret Easter egg in that chapter that involves shooting crows that gives you a 100,000 green gel puddle right by the exit. Being the extremely lucky person that I am, I only saw that trick when I already grinded away everything for three hours. I don't have a link handy, but it was posted in this thread, it was a twitch.tv link.
Click to expand...
Whoaaa, we need a link

Curufinwe said:
After a dozen runs on ch 3 I finally saw the Madonna while climbing up to the tree house.

I don't think I even found half of the statues during my first playthru even though I took my time and looked out for them. I think I just suck at finding hidden items.
Click to expand...
Treehouse?!
 
N

Neiteio

Member
That crow trick really is amazing, though. It has a special cutscene introducing the crows and everything. And it only works in NG+. I was wondering what chapter I should replay first... I think I'll replay Ch. 3 a few times, and get 300,000 green gel. (You can do this trick each time you replay that chapter, right?)
 
-MD-

-MD-

Member
Neiteio said:
That crow trick really is amazing, though. It has a special cutscene introducing the crows and everything. And it only works in NG+. I was wondering what chapter I should replay first... I think I'll replay Ch. 3 a few times, and get 300,000 green gel. (You can do this trick each time you replay that chapter, right?)
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure you can't keep redoing it, it'll let you do it once on a fresh playthrough and again on ng+

This is how I remember it, could be wrong.
 
B

BIONIC-ARRRMMM!!

Member
Just finished chapters 5 and 6 tonight in my nightmare no upgrade run. As expected, I had some issues in the latter half of 5, and the beginning of 6. Nothing too terrible though. Around 10-15 deaths for both chapters. I feel that it should be smooth sailing from here. Only thing that kinda worries me is the big chapter 11 fight. Overall, I'd say this run is still way easier than a upgrades allowed Akumu run.

Crimsonclaw111 said:
Do flash blots kill crows? Would be an awesome homage to RE4.
Click to expand...

I'm pretty sure it doesn't ;_;

One of my favorite parts in RE4 is throwing a flash grenade in the large group of crows that are in El Gigante's area while passing there for the first time. You get a few k of gold, a spinel or two, and even another flash grenade replacing the one you used for your troubles.
 
T

The Xtortionist

Member
BIONIC-ARRRMMM!! said:
I'm pretty sure it doesn't ;_;

One of my favorite parts in RE4 is throwing a flash grenade in the large group of crows that are in El Gigante's area while passing there for the first time. You get a few k of gold, a spinel or two, and even another flash grenade replacing the one you used for your troubles.
Click to expand...

It's those little moments that make RE4 so great. Killing a mass of crows for treasure, backtracking to pick up the free Broken Butterfly, shooting the blue medallions, etc
 
K

Krauser Kat

Member
so i realized i never explored the house before i found leslie in chapter 4 so i redid the chapter
and killed you know who with 5 explosion spears and some shotgun shells is it worth it?

also im running on a R9 290 and is there anyway to keep the game from stuttering when shadows go everywhere.
 
N

Neiteio

Member
Krauser Kat said:
so i realized i never explored the house before i found leslie in chapter 4 so i redid the chapter
and killed you know who with 5 explosion spears and some shotgun shells is it worth it?

also im running on a R9 290 and is there anyway to keep the game from stuttering when shadows go everywhere.
Click to expand...
By "you know who," do you mean
the doctor's brother who is an homage to the first ganado in RE4
?
 
S

SolarPowered

Member
WHwII44.png


So, I finally beat the game after going at it one chapter per night with some rest days between. It was a hell of a ride and in my opinion it would have been THE horror game had the last five chapters been as amazing as chapters 3-10. When the final tally was spinning I was terrified that I'd entered into three digit death territory. I would have been legit ashamed.

The bosses in this game can be the worst if you aren't observant. I tried to kill Laura for a good while at first because I wasn't paying full attention to my environment and her weaknesses. Really, this game is all about watching the bosses, watching the environments and moving constantly. If you are fighting a sub-boss or a boss and you are staying still it won't be pretty. The agony bolt REALLY showed it's stuff in the later boss battles with the capabilities of the flash, lighting and freeze bolts. If an enemy couldn't be flashed then it probably means you can freeze it or paralyze it for a few seconds to reload your weapons and make some spare explosive bolts. I probably died forty times to regular bosses and 3/4ths of it happened before chapter 10 because I moved, but didn't observe and I shot, but I didn't think to use anything more than explosive bolts. The sadist and keeper(s) were no problem on repeat battles once you realize the power of the bolts.

That said, up into chapter 10 it was amazing and chapters 13-14 got sort of close to that feeling again. Chapter 15 was okay, but the highlight really was the final boss fight because until the finale stone face Seb just couldn't react to any of the crazy shit in the final chapter until Ruvik went all
Kaiju
on his ass. Clearly the game is begging for a sequel because neither of the major two stories had a satisfying conclusion.

The lighting, sound, enemy variety and resource management were tuned to literal perfection. I feel like these were the things Tango did the best job of. Every chapter had gorgeous lighting with blacks that weren't crushed, appropriately revealing lighting and beautiful lighting effects on water, foliage and architecture (especially indoors). The sound design was particularly on the dot. Chapter 13 was particularly good about it (the hallways full of haunted and fake
ruviks
). Did anyone else notice that killing the first fake
Ruvik
and moving forward a bit caused more haunted to appear behind you? Very very few games actually do a good job of giving sound proper direction and placement. The Evil Within on the other hand passed that test with flying colors and probably saved my ass quite a few times. My only complaint was the tiny sound produced by the
magnum
which sounds tinier than the pistol. The enemy variety complimented the scarcity of resources perfectly too. My only complaint was the low number of invisible haunted. I'd have liked for the total number in the game to be more like 10-12 instead of the 4-5 we got. This game was chocked full of regular haunted, but it never got tiring thanks to regular appearances by slightly higher level opponents and challenging environments (multilevel, trap laced, open and tight spaces were all available). Every chapter started with a handful (or two at best) of bullets for your pistol and a handful for the rest along with a bolt or two of each type. By the end of chapter 6 anyone playing on survival should be an ammo saving pro at any game.

The real weaknesses for me were the characters (or lack of), the gigantic bars, chapters 11-12, minimal movement abilities, weak story and rather weak storytelling devices. Sebastian just didn't react at all even though things around him were going all Dead Space by chapter 14 and it can really take you out of the mood when someone doesn't react to this crazy shit. Kidman is another one. We heard almost nothing from her. I think all her lines could be written on a standard notebook page in extra large font. Joseph was sort of mundane, but I can sort of see from his personality that it's what they were going for. Unfortunately the game rarely (if ever) took a chance to move the story along with storytelling devices. Resident Evils 3 and below all did wonderful jobs with the creepy journal entries/lab notes (Metroid Prime also managed to instill a slight feeling of dread with the scanning storytelling ability), but Ruvik kept details a bit too vague in the audio logs. Now, the more technical gameplay weaknesses to me were on full display in chapters 11-12 and after experiencing them chapters 13-14 lost a bit of their luster. Somehow I was completely in love and I had almost forgotten the black bars until chapter 11 in the city. These stupid things are downright fatiguing (I think Y2Kev said something similar in Neiteio's gaming side thread) and I finally began to understand the complaints when I found my head hurting after a lot of squinting up/down to get a full look at the
gradual destruction
of Krimson city. Thankfully the headaches never came back for chapters 13 and over. The uncomfortable feeling I and a lot of other people have gotten from the camera would probably be helped be regaining that bigass 30(+) percent of screen real estate taken up by those bars. Reducing the bar size and increasing the FOV will be the first order of business when I finally start my NG+ run. The movement in the game was also way too stilted for my taste. I think I had a discussion with MD about this earlier in the thread where I relented since I only had the demo experience, but after playing it through I feel differently. A simple roll like the one in Demon's Souls and Dark Souls combined with a basic manual cover system would make this game almost perfect if it came with better (i.e. less exaggerated) melee animations. Some of the boss fights and all the group battles in this game would be immensely more fun and fluid if Sebastian could dance around them a bit and dodge dramatically when a boss is about to crush him or drag him to his death.

Based on the demo I'd have never expected anything less than an 8/10, but the version I played sits at the best 7/10 a game can get. I expect FOV and bar fixes will push it up to a solid 8, but all the modding in the world isn't going to improve the admittedly great (but not perfect) combat and weak story/characters. If ANY game needs a sequel it's TEW. I really hope this holiday season was great for Bethesda and Tango because a little more heat and pressure is going to give us a real diamond if they decide to follow up and polish what needs polishing. I got the game for $16 thanks to GMG so I should probably buy a season pass for the DLC (never bought a season pass for a game before) in order to show my support for the IP and Tango.

Edit: The mannequin section in chapter 11 was amazeballs. One of the few moments in those two chapters that was actually worth playing.
 
S

Stratosphere

Member
I'm finally about to pull this one out of my backlog, any tips on what upgrades I should focus on early? From what I have skimmed through, it seems like sprint and revolver stock/crit is the way to go?
 
T

The Xtortionist

Member
Para11ax said:
I'm finally about to pull this one out of my backlog, any tips on what upgrades I should focus on early? From what I have skimmed through, it seems like sprint and revolver stock/crit is the way to go?
Click to expand...

Initially, yeah. You'll eventually want levels in revolver accuracy, shotgun crit, flash bolts, and harpoon bolts.
 
M

Marty-esque

Member
Para11ax said:
I'm finally about to pull this one out of my backlog, any tips on what upgrades I should focus on early? From what I have skimmed through, it seems like sprint and revolver stock/crit is the way to go?
Click to expand...
Handgun critical and accuracy. If you're nailing headshots, you won't be using up ammo from your other weapons against normal enemies. You'll definitely want to increase your sprint. You can't go wrong with stock either.
 
F

Fancy Clown

Member
Para11ax said:
I'm finally about to pull this one out of my backlog, any tips on what upgrades I should focus on early? From what I have skimmed through, it seems like sprint and revolver stock/crit is the way to go?
Click to expand...

A couple levels into sprint if you are having a hard time managing the sprint bar (and for some later levels you will definitely want at least level 3 or 4), and make sure you upgrade your stock for matches, handgun ammo, and bolts. Those are the ammo that drops the most frequently so you want to be able to pick up plenty.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Resident Evil director Shinji Mikami explains why he left Tango Gameworks and founded Kamuy
Game Dev
39
4K
MrRenegade replied
[VGC] Shinji Mikami teases return to work after non-compete clause seemingly ends
Game Dev 2
54
5K
Dick Jones replied
Shinji Mikami slams video game censorship by the Japanese CERO rating board: “The rules are made by people who don’t play games”
Game Dev
15
2K
Moriarty1889 replied
Shinji Mikami is leaving Tango Gameworks
2 3 4 5
239
19K
FalsettoVibe replied
Resident Evil 2 Remake mod gives the game fixed camera and tank controls
Community 2
59
4K
violence replied
Top Bottom