The Evil Within

                   Though I have not completed this game yet, however I felt that I have reached a point in which I am comfortable with conducting a review of it... in short.... I love this game. The Evil Within has a few reasons allow me consider it to be a great horror game. Everything from how the game presents itself, the mechanics, the atmosphere, and how the idea of "horror" is approached.

                   I am going to try to stay away from explaining the story, in the hopes of not ruining it for those of you who have not yet got your hands on the game. That being said, the game has a wonderful story with enough mystery to keep you intrigued (and often confused) while still providing just enough to give you an idea of what is going on. From the trailers we were presented with a variety of different horrific creatures and almost nothing more. From the demo that was released (and reviewed) it was apparent that the developers where going to give us no idea of the story prior to gameplay. . . and for quite a while even that doesn't provide you the full story. You start off investigating a massacre within a mental hospital, but things quickly spiral out of control with the appearance of the main "villian." The Evil Within fully understands that it is a horror game, and it does all it can to play off of that idea. One of my personal favorite things I noticed is that the developers know their horror, and I am talking old school horror. I was playing through and enjoying the story and the game, but then there came a point where I suddenly realized that the events that were occuring, was a clear interpretation of H.P. Lovecraft's Innsmouth story.

                 Every bit of this game is horror, the mechanics are well built, focusing greatly on the idea of stealth in that these are "undead" abominations, they have "powers" that some may consider "super-human." This being said, the game reflects on this through its mechanics. With hard hitting, damage sponge enemies, stealth becomes a much more viable option of gameplay style than the "just shoot stuff" style that is present in recent AAA horror games such as the "Fear," "Dead Space," and "Doom" series.  But instead, it uses factors of award winning AAA horror games such as Resident Evil 4, in that ammo is very scarce, enemies are "scary" and the whole world is just waiting to f*ck you up. 

                One of my favorite things thus far about The Evil Within, is that it doesn't just focus on the use of one style of horror. Many recent "horror" games make good use of one aspect of horror, but they don't necissarily create the horror atmosphere that is what used to make games of the horror genre great. Five Nights At Freddy's for example, does a great job of implementing jump scares, but doesn't really create that horrific atmosphere (check out my review of that game to better understand what I am saying). The Evil Within however uses a broad range of mecahnics to "set the mood." This game creates a fully creepy horror atmosphere through the use of its audio as well as visual, it makes GOOD use of jump-scares (without overdoing it), it uses the "gross" factor, the gore factor, the idea of being "helpless" or continually threatened and worried for your life. On the topic of jump-scares, not only does the game use jump-scares to inflict that sudden fear in the player, but it also doesn't use it at all at other times. This not only scares the player becasue of a jump-scare, but it terrifies the player through the use of anticipation. Honestly, I feel this is even more terrifying than a game that focuses on the use of a lot of jump-scares. In those games, you often come to expect the jumps and eventually the jumps become less and less effective, however when you get the player to expect jump scares, you set the scene up for the perfect scare...the players anticipation is building, they are preparing themselves mentally for the jump; but then it never comes, the player simply continues on, now this is when the player really begins to worry. They began wondering what is going on, why a monster didn't jump out of that area, is there something else building up that they didn't notice? 

As this review is getting very long I am going to cut it off now. Hope you enjoyed. :)