The Evil Within‘s downloadable content has been… interesting, to say the least. The first two add-ons were stealth-centric, while the latest one, The Executioner, transforms the game into a first-person brawler. What?!
Here’s what The Evil Within normally looks like:
A third-person action game focused on shooting zombie-like creatures with guns. Coming from Shinji Mikami, one of the chief creativesbehind Resident Evil, makes that no surprise.
With The Executioner, however, The Evil Within becomes this:
It’s first-person, and that’s a hammer in the corner! You’re actually playing as one of the nastier bad guys from The Evil Within, a lumbering beast with a safe for a head.
Yep, that guy. You get to be him. Given how many times you had to kill that arsehole in the game, it’s satisfying to deal out some violent justice with his weapon.
Unfortunately, The Executioner is pretty boring and a little one note. You walk from room to room, bash enemies in the head, and move on. Some bad guys drop coins, which you can use to upgrade your health, weapons, and purchase new ways of enacting violence. There’s not much nuance to the whole affair, which isn’t how you’d usually describe a Shinji Mikami video game.
Most frustratingly, it’s often style over substance. For example, the game switches to a third-person view to properly show off the “executions” that’s cool until it prevents you from being able to avoid enemies properly. That said, it does let you watch some amazing kills. Like this:
And this:
Oh, and this:
Good game? Maybe not. Disgustingly excellent kills? Yep.
Like the other two add-ons, I’ve played about an hour and found myself wondering it it’s worth moving on. There are so many other video games out right now, I’m not sure I can find the time. These experiments have been fascinating, departures from the usual approach to downloadable content, but I’m mostly interested in what Mikami has to say next.
You can watch me play a little bit of it here, if you’d like.
Comments
6 responses to “The Evil Within’s Last Expansion Tries Really Hard, Fails”
For about half that video I thought it was Jay Baruchel narrating.
Kills look sweet, other then that sounds quite boring lol
Urgh, Kotaku reviews. 2 stars for the original game? Have you actually ever played a true 2 star/poor game, Patrick?
The Evil Within was and still is a great game. Plenty of people loved it, including myself. If it isn’t Battlefield, CoD or something painfully generic, it seems to be deemed poor on this site. People have absolutely no taste these days. I mean even Dying Light didn’t review as well as it should have.
Kotaku and it’s commentary are starting to become like Gamefaqs.com; everyone is either an asshole or as dumb as a post.
I really liked the original.probably more than alien and shadow of mordor. Haven’t played any dlc yet though.
I enjoyed the first two dlc overall, I just wish they’d mixed it up a bit more in the gameplay department.
I really enjoyed the stealth in small, optional doses, but being forced to do it for almost the entirety of both was tiring.
Also, they seemed to drop all the extra story content in the first part, finding out how & why Kidman was there was interesting but how it all played out in part two was predictable & I was able to guess it all from was was hinted at in the main game.
Really needed some kind of twist or hidden secret revealed at the end.
I’m not too keen on this dlc being first person, I always prefer 3rd, that’s my bias, but it also kind of removes the fun of playing as a monster if you can’t see.
Those special kill animations don’t really make up for it.
Overall I’ve enjoyed my time with The Evil Within, it’s not really Survival Horror, but it’s a he’ll of a lit closer than Resident Evil these days & of a higher quality all round compared to Silent Hill (real shame about Hills being cancelled).
The Evil Within is sort of a retro throwback these days. The most popular horror games in recent memory at Outlast and FNAF, which make you feel venerable by making you face danger with no way to defend yourself. Horror like this, the third person gore shooter, doesn’t work anymore because people aren’t shocked by gore anymore.