The Evil Within

The Evil Within has been looked at as the resurgence of horror survival games and after playing it for a while after picking it up at midnight it's nothing short of terrifying. It starts off with a 911 call and having Castellanos respond to the call at the mental hospital. It takes no time to usher in the fear, chaos, and challenge of this game. No time was wasted starting a rather vague story at first. As you continue on you deal with what comes down to basic survival skills (as far as escaping zombies go.) One of the weak sides of this game is the voice acting, it is rather bleak and causes for some large character discrepancies. Castellanos is not the most solid character ever written, and little is known about his past and he got where he is now. Proceeding through the game you pick up new weapons and tools to make your life easier while the game continues to get more challenging. This is great because you never feel like you're just walking through the game without actually trying. Scarcity of resources is one thing Mikami perfected in this game, minus the matches. I feel like I can find 100 matches but only 3 bullets a chapter, so maybe an update fixing the balancing the items scattered around the game would help. The scenery is most epically scary, it brings you back to that unsure foggy feeling of Mikami's greatest game Resident Evil 4. In that sense most people who like Resident Evil will most likely enjoy this game. One thing I know most people will complain about (Including me) is the fact it makes you play in wide screen. This however you will get over rather quickly because of the horror and chilling effect. Don't let the screen ruin a what is an amazing game for you. The camera can be finicky at times and can cause you to die but those situations are far and few between to make it a real problem. I only had two real big problems with the game, the first one is hiding in closets, lockers, and under beds. While this is a refreshing change it becomes frustrating because when you hide there the zombies still some how know you're there even if you sneak in there and are never noticed. The second is the glitches with the game play and visual effects. You will at some point, problem more often than not, try to evade a zombie and yet get stuck somehow. This becomes infuriating because you will die unnecessarily way too often. The reason I don't let that get to me is because it is a rather simple problem to solve in an update I seriously hope they provide. (along with giving a full screen option.) Between the scary and addicting game play, intriguing yet confusing story, and feeling of never knowing what's going to happen, this is a must play for any fan of the horror survival genre.