INTRODUCTION

credits

Hey steemians! Been a while I posted something here. I have been very busy lately and did not have the time to post. I will try to be more active and post more! Now, without further ado let's start with the review:

 The Evil Within series is the brainchild of the one who is often cited as the father of Survival Horror, Shinji Mikami. Some of Mikami-San’s most notable works include; Resident Evil 1,2,3,4 and Dino Crisis. Mikami-San is also the founder and CEO of Tango Gameworks, which is the studio responsible for the development of both The Evil Within 1 & 2. During the inception of The Evil Within, Mikami-San stated that he wanted to go back to “Survival Horror” with The Evil Within franchise as most horror titled games were leaning more towards of being “Action Horror”. While the first game managed to take a step in the right direction, it wasn't without its share of flaws. Now, learning from the first games mistakes and with a different directorial vision, has the sequel finally managed to become what Makami-San had envisioned? Let's find out.

STORY 7/10:

The story takes place 3 years after the first game. You reprise the role of Ex-detective Sebastian Castellanos, who is still trying to cope with the loss of his wife and daughter in a house fire and the psychological trauma he went through in the first game. One day at a bar, Sebastian is approached by Juli Kidman, Sebastian’s former partner and Mobius agent. She tells him that his daughter Lily is not dead and that he needs to save her. With that much, Sebastian once again gets back into STEM to save his daughter and face his deepest nightmares.

The games premise is what you would usually find in a B-rate movie. But that is not to say it isn't enjoyable. The game is a much more narrative experience than the first one. It just lacks originality. There isn't enough screen-on time with the cast that you would care about them. This goes for the main antagonist as well. While the cut-scenes are well depicted, most conversation sections with the supporting cast seems a bit off mostly due to the camera angles and sometimes off lip-synching. An enjoyable experience, but not a memorable one.

GAMEPLAY 9/10:

The game play’s in a third-person, over-the- shoulder perspective. Unlike the first game, this game is a bit more open ended. You have the luxury of roaming in a small open world. It is in this open world that you can collect items such as health and crafting parts. You can also to do side-quests to get various additional goodies. Once you engage in a main quest, it takes a much more linear approach. The game also tends to get more linear the closer you are to finishing the game.

For your adventure, You are equipped with an assortment of weapons ranging from handguns, shotguns, assault rifles etc. With the show stopper being the Warden Crossbow. The Warden Crossbow is a weapon that is capable of firing a variety of bolts, ranging from Harpoons, Explosive bolts, Electric bolts, Freeze bolts, Smoke bolts etc. While there are a lot of guns, you can't say the same about ammo. Ammo is limited and there are two ways in which you can acquire ammunition, scout for them or craft them using crafting items on-the-go or at workbenches. Crafting ammo on-the-go takes more resources than compared to crafting them at workbenches. Workbenches are only available at safe rooms. So making every bullet count is as important as avoiding direct confrontation when ever possible, in the game.

The way that the upgrade system works is that you have two seperate upgrade trees. One for physical attributes such as Health, Recovery, Stealth, Accuracy etc and another one for your weapons such as Firepower, Ammo Capacity, Reload speed etc. Each weapon class needs to be upgraded separately. Physical attributes are upgraded using “Green Gel” which you get from fallen enemies and weapons are upgraded using “Weapons Parts” which you can find scattered in the game world.

The game also brought the cover system, which was first introduced in the first game’s DLC story content. After you beat the game, you unlock new game plus mode where you can replay the story with all your upgrades, weapons and a few additional unlockables such as new outfits. It took me about 17 hours with completing every side-quest to beat the game.

In all, the gameplay has been been vastly improved when compared to the original and is extremely fun with a decent amount of challenge.

VISUALS AND PERFORMANCE 8/10:

Visuals have seen a drastic improvements over the first game. Everything from smoke effects, volumetric lighting, shadow effects have made drastic improvements. The game uses the a heavily modified version of the Id Tech 5 happily named STEM. While there are obvious improvements to the game from a graphical aspect, I couldn't help but notice some issues like certain muddy textures, item pop-in’s and somewhat mediocre facial animations.

The game is programmed to run at a native 1080p@30fps on PS4 and PS4 Pro. When it comes to frame rates, it seems to be a different case altogether. The system does not manage to quite hit the mark having dips here and there though didn't notice any drops that would hinder the overall experience. Only instances I noticed a noticeable drop was in the safe house.The game is also stated to receive a PS4 Pro and Xbox One X support patch at a later date.

AUDIO 7.5/10:

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="

" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

One of my favorite theme from the game 

While I did enjoy and appreciate the sound effects, especially effects such as head explosion and gunshots, the overall Audio presentations leaves much to be desired. The voice cast was changed from the first game and while the new voice over work was good for most of the game, it lacked emotion at times and at times just sounded out of place. Soundtracks also seemed limited where there wasn't enough of it to amplify the mood of certain situations during gameplay till much later on in the game.

OVERALL SCORE: 31.5/40

STORY: 7/10

GAMEPLAY: 9/10

VISUALS & PERFORMANCE: 8/10

AUDIO: 7.5/10

78.75% Rate of approval

CONCLUSION

With a lower than expected sales in the first week of launch, the chances of seeing another installment in the Evil Within universe is highly unlikely, which is a shame, considering the game is actually good. All we can do at the moment is hope that Tango Gameworks decides to make a 3rd part of the game in future and till then… I’ll keep myself busy with The Evil Within 2.

<iframe width="854" height="480" src="

" frameborder="0" gesture="media" allow="encrypted-media" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Official trailer

You can check my last review of Nier: Automata here

 Note: All Screenshots of the game were taken during my play session.