The Evil Within Preview

A lot of games have been released in the past few years with the intention of making you jump and scaring you, but often what these games are lacking is an actual story. It can often feel that the so called ‘plot’ has been loosely spun around events that should make you jump. So what happens when a game comes along that will make you feel for the characters as well as shitting a brick on a regular basis? Well, that’s exactly what The Evil Within seems to be shaping up to be.

The Evil Within is an upcoming Survival Horror title from Tango Gameworks and Bethesda Softworks, directed by the legend of this genre himself, Shinji Mikami, known best for his hand in the Resident Evil series.

We were dropped into the shoes of Detective Sebastian Castellanos a little bit through the game, so not to spoil the plot too much. The second the control was taken away from a cutscene and given to us, we were instantly put on edge. At the time, we weren't exactly sure why but, looking back, it was a meticulous use of lightning, sound and the feeling of helplessness. This feeling came from the severe lack of ammunition, health and that we could see three figures shuffling around a campfire just up ahead.

Faced with the choice of investigating the figures or enter a creepy house that we believe was an insane asylum, we opted to check out the campfire. Holding our breath, we crept through the shadows, trying to find a good place to sit and watch these, for lack of a better word, creatures; when all of a sudden one of them brushed past our right side and the first of many gasps escaped our mouths. Luckily, it didn't spot us and we managed to utilise the Silent Takedown mechanic which we would learn will be integral in surviving The Evil Within with not only your pride intact, but your underwear clean.

After taking out the creatures by the campfire, it seemed the only way to progress the story was to enter the house and we had a few different choices of doors to enter. Being the fraidy cats we are, we opted for entering via the top floor, giving us a much better view of everything below us. Instantly we regretted this decision as a monster bursted out from a closed door and tried to sell us adult nappies. We weren't having any of it and used far too much of our limited ammo supply on trying to hit it.

You've got a lot of options on how you take down your foes in The Evil Within, some more recommended than others. You've got your knife which, whilst silent and doesn't run out of ammo, you need to be within about two feet of your target to actually attack with it. We’re not sure about you, but we wanted to stay as far away as possible from the things that want nothing more than to take you home to their monster family and serve you over a side order of rice and vegetables.

Next you've got your run-of-the-mill revolver, shotgun and grenades but, with their limited supply of ammo, you’re not going to get very far with running and gunning. Last but not least, you've got an over sized Agony Crossbow that frankly, we’re not entirely sure where Sebastian was keeping. This crossbow runs on three types of bolts: a flashbang-styled one which will stun your foes, allowing you to get up close and personal to take them down, a harpoon which will pin your enemy to walls (for a short period of time), and explosive ones which, well, explode. You craft these bolts using parts which are found lying around the environment and gained from dismantling traps.

Walking through the house and dismembering a few more enemies, we encountered the main enemy in the game, Ruvik. Not only does he have a fairly bone-chilling voice, but from what we saw, you can’t kill the bastard. He will randomly appear throughout your journey and sap your life down to nil if he gets too close. Your only option is to run around like a little girl playing kiss chase until he gets bored and plays with the crayons instead (disappears). There’s quite a number of these types of enemies in the game - ones that you can’t actually kill so just have to hightail it out of there. It does make quite a nice change to the mindless slaughter you’ll be doing in the rest of the game, but also got quite infuriating when you die countless times because you've yet to realise you can’t kill it.

But anyway, back to Ruvik. Shown as a hooded man, when he’s not turning up and trying to cop a feel, he’s messing with your psychological state by sealing doors shut with human remains and pitting an army of his creatures against you - not the friendliest of chaps looking back. He also enjoyed making us run down an endless corridor or forcing which way we went by teleporting us around if it wasn’t the right way.

The second chapter we played was quite a bit later in the game than the first and was based in Ruvik’s mansion. This chapter’s pace was dramatically different to the first. Namely there was much less running away and shooting creatures and much more puzzle solving and story aspects. Without spoiling too much, there’s a task that has to be completed and to do so, you need to perform surgical manipulation on three separate occasions.

There were still plenty of scares in the mansion, but the vast majority of these were in our mind. Sure, there were some creatures waiting to pounce on us, but we’re made to jump at least half a dozen times by our own shadow flickering on a wall in the candlelight. This, to us, was a much better use of the genre and perfectly summarised what we are hoping the rest of The Evil Within will contain - making us shit bricks without actually doing anything.