The Devil Inside Review
The game's story and adventure elements aren't very interesting in themselves, and the novelty of the TV-show premise gets old soon enough.
Developed by Cryo Interactive, a company best known for making point-and-click adventure games reminiscent of Myst, The Devil Inside is actually a fully 3D horror-themed action game with a few adventure elements thrown in. It's similar to the classic early '90s action-adventure, Alone in the Dark, and in fact the designer of that game worked on The Devil Inside. During the game, you play as the star of a bizarre TV show that tracks you, much to the delight of an international audience, as you fight your way through continuous encounters with supernatural villains. It's like Cops, but with zombies and graphic violence. The game's premise is interesting - especially since the main character, Dave, has the unusual ability to morph into the leather-clad succubus, Deva. However, The Devil Inside is marred by problems with its camera perspective and its play mechanics, as well as by the occasionally frustrating design of its various scenes.
You play The Devil Inside from a third-person camera angle that usually floats a few feet behind the main character. In fact, the camera view floats quite literally. In some of the game's cutscenes, which break from the standard third-person view, you can actually spot a small, propeller-powered hovering camera situated behind your character. You can even see it in the mirrors in the haunted mansion you explore, and during the course of the game, your entire view will sometimes get distorted with static when the camera gets jolted. It's an interesting and effective technique that helps justify the particular way you see the game. There's also a cameraman who follows your character most of the time, filming the action. He's supposed to be unobtrusive, but he does absolutely nothing to avoid danger, which, depending on the situation, is either funny or irritating. In any event, the cameraman seems like a missed opportunity. He'll hardly flinch if you happen to shoot him (by accident or not), and sometimes he'll even get in the way of the main view.
It's this third-person view that's the real problem. The camera in The Devil Inside can hardly handle a lot of the narrower settings in the game. As you travel through hallways and corridors, you'll find that the camera often has a very hard time keeping track of your movement. This is bound to frustrate you as you play, since you'd expect the game's camera view to do a better job of portraying the action. This is especially true because a game that puts so much emphasis on cameras in the first place ought to have done a better job with getting the view to look right at all times. The Devil Inside has a few clever options that let you view the action from different angles - for instance, you can watch the game from the cameraman's perspective, or set up spy cameras that let you view remote areas in a picture-in-picture display. Occasionally, the game will even pause to give an instant replay of a dramatic deathblow. But these gimmicky features don't change the fact that the game is difficult to control as a result of the default viewpoint.
- GameSpot Score 6.8 fair
Critic Scores
- IGN 8.1 / 10
- Game Rankings 84 / 100
- GameZone 7.5 / 10
- Game Vortex 6.5 / 10
- Just Adventure C+
- GameSpot UK (Pre-2003) 8.5 / 10
- Game Raiders 80 / 100
- Games First! 3 / 5
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