“Well, where a bad thing happened. That was in Room 217, and I want you to promise me you won’t go in there, Danny. Not all winter. Steer right clear.”
― Stephen King, The Shining
I like the idea of being trapped, I love lurking shadows spectating my moves even more. I like the idea of being haunted, even in video games. When I think of it, my favourite novel has always been Connor McCarthy’s The Road, my favourite tele-series is The Walking Dead, my favourite film is Danny Boyle’s massively underrated 28 Days Later and until now my favourite game/s have been The Last Of Us and Dark Souls (neck to neck!) Throughout my life, I have gone from bad to worse, visualising and experiencing second hand horror. My cruel yardstick always eyeing for that never-seen-before horror scene keeps on dejecting many biggies. And so here I am, the reason why I am writing this, The Evil Within becomes my first preorder for my PS4. In broad daylight, the first PS4 title to hit the shelves is going to be a third party game. Let’s drop some music now; it’s called In the House, In a Heartbeat, a track from my favourite horror film, as I explain why:
Why so? Amidst a lot of negative vibes already floated around by the likes of industry veterans Mitch Dyer? It is firstly because I won’t stop, I was once smitten by the idea of horror tales, and ever since I’ve been a loyal infected case. I was not personally there to experience The Evil Within first hand at E3, but from the video footages that I saw, I can rest assured that this is going to be a classic revival of the dark horror (that defined the likes of Sam Raimi’s Evil Dead and Guillermo Del Toro’s The Devil’s Backbone). It is the unavoidable violence, the ruffling cold atmosphere and the will to survive to see the morning that will set the perfect balance to a Shinji Mikami terror tale. That brings me to part two of this long drawn discussion.
The biggest perk of being a videogame journalist is that you can save tons of cash, thanks to the free games that I get to review. But this time, things can be scripted otherwise; I may not even end up reviewing the title. Because like my horror movies, I want to savour every moment, every chill, every bone creak, and go stealthy instead of all guns blazing at the title that I really want to live. I do not want to take calls asking me to wrap up the game so that sales pick up based on my honest review, I want to be a gamer, not a critic. I wrapped up Dark Souls 2 in a week, and I kind of felt unattached to the game after a while, I don’t want to subdue a Mikami comeback story.
When I was in school, I would save money during summers in my piggy bank and go for every Resident Evil game that would come to town. I’ve faced adults who won’t stand the blood and mud I would be smeared in, as the lead character; I fought them single-handedly. I kept this trend going until the emergence of Operation Raccoon City, that game was just MEH! I felt that the original RE gameplay as well as its best parts were getting rehashed with pointless blood and gore. What also made the series fall flat on its face was the absence of the Mikami brilliance, who single handedly carried the real essence of RE to regular gamers like us. Imagine a Stephen King novel, like Dreamcatcher, being scripted for a film, without the presence of King himself. Of course, it boils down to multiple headcounts and a drive to commercially make it a successful title in that case. Even the god Morgan Freeman can’t save you then.
The good thing about The Evil Within is that it is very much the old style Resident Evil, even the demo opening cutscene looks inspired from the RE and Silent Hill agenda, a lost town. The even better news is, it does not play like Resident Evil, where you can shoot and run at will (except for the bosses). Mikami gets the hint from Naughty Dog about how to create that unique survival instinct with limited ammo, and cleverer enemy AI, who will waste your bullets if you are still stuck in your 2000s. Evil Within nurtures a sense of being cursed, facing monsters that won’t die at a hat’s drop, reanimating from the floors unless you set them on fire. The point blank situations wherein you would walk into a room and find a horde of undead waiting for you is plentiful. Mikami is setting you up in this freakhouse with some mediocre guns and tons of bizarre lurkers.
Mikami is a specialist and a game changer at the same time. He has brought in the RPG concept into a demon fighting game with the original Devil May Cry and with The Evil Within latest gameplay featurettes, rest assured you won’t be heedlessly shooting around that dingy dark hospital ward. I haven’t seen a single spectre of day light in any of the trailers, so I’m even more excited at this true blue horror franchise. The game differs from the other upcoming survival games for the next generation consoles, like Bloodborne, Dying Light and Dead Island 2 in the way the game plays out. The introduction of the undead stalker Rubik adds to the darkness of the plot and will certainly open up the sandbox of the asylum, as you would run from corridor to rooms, trying to escape him, and only to find more undead waiting for your skin. Or getting blown away by rigged proximity bombs.
The game will certainly have a spin of its own, a good first half of the storyline. But will the whole story be as gripping as the trailers show? Only time will tell. History has it that Mikami prefers gameplay diversities over a complicated plot. The very reviewers who are bashing Michael Bay for presenting yet another weak storyline in Transformers: Age of Extinction will be telling you not to preorder The Evil Within, because there’s nothing about it except for pure horror and a few gruesome post mortem scenes. You don’t buy a horror game based on how great the story looks like, you buy it for the chills, how you felt when you saw that shit on YouTube, as you scream while the city sleeps, spilling coffee on your gaming pyjamas. This game surely looks like a third person version of one of my favourite video games, Outlast, with a hint of Slender and F.E.A.R., with the addition of Rubik. Make sure you do not miss out on such a complex mind blower like The Evil Within, people who love horror games are absolutely looking forward to it. And I just got a PS4 for this. The Evil Within will be the best way to explore the technical and visual prowess of my Playstation 4, and will also earmark the beginning of yet another console relationship. Amen.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=keINyY91LoA
I am looking forward to this game too, but I don’t expect it to be that great visually, i feel like it will still lack in some pretty bad graphics.. I hope not, but the gameplay videos they are showing, seem lackluster in the visual department, and while i thoroughly enjoy being scared shitless, i do believe that the plot needs to be strong at this day and age, progression of time has seen me go from side scrolling, save the princess mario, to now expecting a solid story to draw me in.. for these reasons Witcher 3, DA:I, Middle-Earth: Shadow of Mordor are all my most anticipated games coming out within the next year.
I don’t think RE or DMC for that matter was ever conceived to become a visual experience, look how gameplay took a sidewalk when visuals became so important in the latest DMC. What I expect visually from a enjoyable horror game is the chilly, dark atmosphere and volumetric light to set up the stage. Anything after that is anyways excess to me. Your fears with the plot matches mine, but again, great gameplay can often manage a messy storyline (Dark Souls 2, Thief). Dragon Age was kind of a prolonged matter for me, it took me long to really bite into the mechanics and role playing bits in the game, I was engrossed more into Dragon’s Dogma. But surely Inquisition being a much more free playing and open worlded game, I am looking forward to it too. But it’ll be The Evil Within, Alien: Isolation and Bloodborne that will stay in my radar for now, all of them coincidentally being horror games ;)