The Evil Within is a horror experience built on such an outstanding foundation-the chilling use of light and shadow, the menacing audio flourishes-that merely traversing its environments is enough to make your heart skip a few beats. So the world lacks context, but it doesn't lack impact. It's a saw whose teeth have been worn down by overuse. Castellanos is a wooden and thoroughly uninteresting protagonist, a gruff cop with a dark past whose in-game journal actually contains the line, "I have to stay strong, but it's so easy to drown my thoughts in whiskey." Then there's the overarching plot, so meandering and slipshod with its constant jumps in and out Castellanos' tormented visions that this narrative trickery becomes routine, even numbing in a way. Nor is it self-aware, lacking any trace of that cheeky, almost-a-Jill-sandwich charm of early survival horror games. The brief preamble leading up to this investigation is all the calm The Evil Within can muster, because from then on Castellanos is sent tumbling through a twisted and only occasionally coherent story involving supernatural apparitions, gruesome monsters, and a seemingly infinite series of nightmarish backdrops. What's left, though, is an uneven but ultimately captivating ode to the glory days of survival horror.Īt the center of it all is Sebastian Castellanos, a detective called in to investigate a vicious collection of murders at a local mental hospital.
Were it not for the occasional stumble into moments of immense frustration and an aimless, sputtering story, The Evil Within could have been something truly great. Much of this tension is thanks to the game's striking use of atmosphere, so gloomy and impactful it often borders on suffocating, but it's also a testament to an action-heavy combat system whose scant ammunition and immediate threat of death is just as demanding as it is satisfying.
It's driven by a slow, sustained, and deeply pervasive sense of dread that sets your mind racing at every crunch of glass beneath your feet and every distant groan from an unseen enemy. The Evil Within is not a game that relies on cheap jump scares.
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