The Evil Within - Nitro Rad

[Music] when I draw Fred I really feel in recent years the survival horror genre has been slowly dying what was once a genre about conserving ammo and making every shot count slowly transformed into first-person adventure games with heavy focus on running and hiding this transformative nature started around the time amnesia the Dark Descent came out and suddenly everyone has this idea that you have to be defenseless for a game to be scary if you have a gun how are you gonna be scared dude I beg to differ regardless I always found myself really missing the more survival shooter focus games in the genre games like Silent Hill and Resident Evil even if the games didn't manage to be inherently terrifying I always enjoyed the 1 to 1 gunplay where every move was carefully lined up because supplies were really scarce it seems Shinji Mikami creator of the Resident Evil series felt the same way years after leaving Capcom he created his own studio called tango GameWorks the first game out of these guys was the evil within not really a spiritual successor to the Resident Evil series but a game very fashioned after Ari for the last Resident Evil game that Mikami worked on an attempt to bring some life back into the slowly dying genre survival horror is one of my favorite genres ever I mean as you guys know I'm a gigantic Silent Hill fan but I also really loved a number of the Resident Evil games most notably 7 and when I was back in high school I was a huge fan of dead space and I've got the Platinum trophy to prove it the evil within seemed like the next logical game to get myself invested in I got it the year came out and it slowly but surely became one of my most favourite games yeah I know weird huh I know a lot of people really do not like this game but I personally thoroughly enjoyed it so much that I beat it more than a dozen times and even finished the game on a Kumu difficulty that's when you die in one hit yeah and then I got the Platinum trophy and now there's nothing left to do in it other than give it a proper review and post it up online so yeah with a sequel coming out next month I figured no better time than the give this game James what are you doing it's September dude if I can walk into a Walmart right now and buy myself a coffin crisp in a box of scary's I can start my Halloween special in September didn't know you were the month expert yeah let's do the evil within story begins with detective Sebastian Castellanos responding to a distress call at beacon mental hospital along with them as his partner Joseph Oda and his rookie and training Julie Kidman on the way there they all hear this strange high-pitched ringing noise almost making officer Connolly crashed the car upon arriving they find the main lobby riddled with dead bodies after finding a single survivor dr. Marcelo Jimenez Sebastian checks the security cameras where he sees a cloaked figure magically warping around slaying officer dudes and then warping behind him this is the game's villain ruvik you're gonna be seeing a lot of him through with the game said blacks out and wakes up in a nightmare world where he's tied to the ceiling by his feet and a monstrous butcher dude drags bodies off to be chopped up Sebastian must now escape find his surviving partners and figure out what the hell is going on I think the game is a fairly solid hook I mean it goes from zero to 100 in mere seconds what starts off as a simple response to a mass murder case turns into a Silent Hill alternate reality nightmare world where we no longer have any sweet clue what's going on so the first thing you're gonna do is sneak into the next room grab that key and try to get your butt out of there the entire first chapter has a heavy emphasis on sneaking around trying to avoid detection to do this you're gonna crouch walk duck behind cover hide and lockers and toss bottles to make distractions as far as stealth goes it's fairly rudimentary don't expect Deus Ex or Metal Gear levels of depth here it's interesting though how the game reels you in with this first chapter that plays very much closer to modern horror games you know being defenseless hiding from enemies instead of taking them out with a weapon all of this is something that's only kinda involved in the main gameplay though I mean past the first chapter there will be moments when you can hide in dressers and beds and in lockers and such but it's really only there for people that enjoy that kind of play style personally I really don't I'm way too impatient there's nothing I find more boring than waiting in a locker for somebody to leave the room it's almost the sole reason why mgs2 is my least favorite Metal Gear game honestly though all this hiding really feels like an afterthought in this game I mean stealth an around for sneak kills is great because it saves on ammo but hiding never really felt like it was the ideal thing to do in any scenario for me again though that might probably depend on your play style ya'll might like hiding but uh I like busting some knees and dropping some matches that's one mechanic this game has that super cool match dropping when you knock an enemy down you can drop a match to burn their body so if they're not dead yet you want to finish them off without wasting any more ammo you can use up a match instead it's also possible to burn multiple bodies with just one match even enemies that are still standing up if you can get a hang of it you can really get your money's worth what I like to do is blast three guys all down with a shotgun then light them all up once they're all down together only using one shotgun shell and only using one match or if there's already a dead dude on the ground you can wait for another enemy to get close and if you can time it just right drop that match and boom you light them on fire sometimes there's also gonna be enemies that are playing dead and if you can recognize that you can use up a match to get rid of them so you don't have to deal with them when they stand up you're no match for me weapon wise this game is really whittled down to the basics and I find the gameplay really benefits from that kind of simplicity you've got the four main weapons the handgun for those carefully placed headshots and for busting out kneecaps the shotgun for taking out bigger dudes blasts and heads clear off or like I said before knockin dudes onto the ground you've got the rifle for picking off dudes that are far away with nice well-timed precise headshots oho and finally the agony crossbow a really unique weapon that like the matches really helped make this game feel completely different than any other survival horror game it's a crossbow that has a number of different bolts there's regular ones that'll just stick through people stick them to walls knock them back whatever there's a flash bolts that will stun enemies so you can get off those sneak kills and they're blinded electricity bolts that'll shock enemies and keep them in place these ones are perfect for boss fights breeds bolts that will freeze somebody's solid and explosive bolts which those one's a pretty self-explanatory well you can find these bolts laying around just like you'll find any other regular ammo you'll mostly craft these from crafting supplies which you'll find a lot throughout the game each bolt uses a different amount the most basic ones like that just the regular ones only use up to and the more helpful and advanced one's will use up more I know what you're thinking and I agree crafting sucks dick but it's really simple it's just like purchasing them kinda you press the pause button game pauses you select which bolts you want and you just like spend whatever supplies you have on getting the ones you want the different bolts can all be very helpful for different situations and your own unique play style will likely determine which ones you use most you can even upgrade them using brain gel a strange green substance you'll find throughout the game using this you'll upgrade an array of your abilities including the performance of each of your weapons and Sebastian himself yeah big gamer pro tip for all y'all upgrade your sprint a lot ASAP because the default sprint time really stinks you can run for like 3 seconds and then subs out of breath I am not a fit man and I can run 20 times at length i assure you that right now this is one of the biggest complaints i always hear about this game you can't sprint long enough and i really don't blame anybody for that it really shouldn't be on the player to use all of their earliest resources and making the sprinting mechanic functional I do like the upgrade system overall though it lets the player focus on improving whatever weapons and abilities they use most allowing people to really play the way they like if you like shotguns make that thing hit hard make it so you can put way too many bullets into that thing if you're more about popping off careful headshots boost that crit rate on that handgun and if you're a more technical kind of dude extend the amount of time the flash starts blind enemies for it's cool I really like it another pro tip upgrade the standard bolts to max when you can you might not really think they're very helpful on their own but the level 5 ones they burn enemies on impact making it an instant kill for even the hardest of enemies and on top of that it's silent so you won't even draw attention to yourself doing it it feels very rewarding improving your skills and it makes exploration feel a lot more rewarding too this game has a lot of hidden nooks and crannies all of which contain extra ammo health and if you're lucky brain gel I think this is something very important in survival horror games and the evil within gives the Box a bold strong check outside of the actual weapons you can find additional one-off weapons the first is an axe you'll find these lying around but you can only use them once each but it'll instant kill anybody and if you can get multiple dudes with the one swing you'll take them all out together the torch is similar one use instant kill but this one instead lights them all on fire lastly there's glass bottles which aren't really used for killing enemies but instead can be thrown to create distractions or can be thrown at an enemy to briefly stun them these are also great for setting off traps and bombs especially if an enemy's standing near one I like these weapons a lot it gives the game a feeling of improvisation you know you see an axe you grab it kill one dude then you move right on the game's got a solid variety when it comes to level design - every chapter seems to offer something kind of different the first couple of chapters take place in an old village these ones are very open-ended there's so many ways to approach the situation you might sneak around to the back door going through a window there's plenty of entries and exits to every building allowing you to work around your environment to avoid or plan yourself against enemies this level right here is fantastic for it your goal is to simply defeat all of the enemies and you're pitted in this factory like area full of ladders railings and switches you can pull the trigger traps and whatnot it's like a jungle gym and you're playing grounders scurrying from platform to platform getting the zombies right where you want them all the while trying to stay the hell away from what I've read online a lot of people seem to really prefer the more open-ended direction of this game and I admit many of the game's highlights definitely occur in this kind of level later on the game sways away from the open-ended design in favor of longer narrower hallways but I don't think that's inherently a bad thing I think that by having a good blend of both of these styles a level the game hits a great middle ground between the open-ended village areas of Resident Evil 4 and the more claustrophobic corridors of dead space I really liked some of the games monster designs like the keeper he's this butcher looking dude with a safe for a head supposed to represent Rubik the evil secret sword I don't know every time you kill him he comes right on back giving you this sense of urgency you only have the few seconds between killing him and him coming back to get that Valve turned though I guess it is pretty easy to look at him and just think wow Pyramid Head ripoff they originally weren't even going use them in the game because of that a quote from the art of the evil within reads he wasn't very well received initially mainly because the design looked like it was from another horror game however from a designer's perspective intentionally using established designs is a foolproof way to get horror across to the audience there's even a direct reference to Pyramid Head in the game during the final fight with the keeper you fight two of him at once that spawned side by side much like the final time you fight against Pyramid Head in Silent Hill 2 I really like this game's boss fights they all feel unique in their own right the keeper will test your endurance how long can you keep up the chase getting the only seconds of breathing room every time you kill him one of my favorites has got to be a Laura a creature with long black hair and more limbs than anybody should really have she's a recurring boss she'll encounter her three times two of which are actual boss battles the first time you'll scour a factory for things a lighter on fire with torches matches foundry pits it has you clamoring for supplies while also trying to escape her grasp the second time around you'll mostly take advantage of using traps activating them by shooting valves and whatnot I could go on and on about how this game plays but long story short I loved the gameplay the gunplay feels great ammunition is scarce so you're encouraged to play things carefully you're rewarded for exploring and there's a lot of room for experimenting in finding strategies that work for you so if the game plays so well at least according to me why don't so many people like this game well there's actually quite a number of reasons for that and I do honestly agree with a number of them firstly the game has some performance issues even after the game's final update the game has a lot of framerate problems and lacks cosmetic polish in many areas especially the cutscenes it seems like the game's camera does not know how to cut without something loading in late and it's never something subtle like a character model not being there for one frame I'm talking textures and objects that take up almost half of the screen taking seconds to load in after they're already on camera it looks terrible and it's credibly distracting the framerate issues are really on and off it's mostly apparent during the outdoor village segments in chapters three and four and there's a couple of times where it'll slug again like this section here but the frame rate does learn to behave and the game will run fine most other times this is all based on my experience playing it on ps4 mind you I can't speak for the Xbox one or PC versions though I have heard that the PC version also has a lot of problems whether or not they've been fixed since release I really don't know and then there's also the aspect ratio this was a pretty big deal when the game first came out the game launched with this extra wide thr call aspect ratio I thought this was really cool at first I'm a filmmaker myself so was something that I appreciated but as I played the game more and more I started to realize that this ratio just isn't practical I remember reading in an interview I can't find it for the life of me so forgive me if this is not even real I imagine this or something but I vaguely recall me Comi saying something like it makes you feel more claustrophobic not being able to see the ceiling or the floor on top of that II wanted the game to be more cinematic like a horror movie hence them adding a grain filter as well so yeah while I can understand and appreciate that it just makes the game harder to play you don't get a tall enough vertical view and it makes objects harder to interact with luckily they did realize this months down the road after a lot of player feedback and they have long since patched the game with an option to turn the letterboxing off so this issue has long since been resolved oh right so here is the big giant thing everybody hates about this game this story it has been called nonsensical by so many people that have played this game but I I kind of really like it yeah it is dumb and there's a lot of plot holes but I mean I do enjoy this game's plot believe it or not so because of that I'm gonna try to explain the whole thing skip here if you don't want to hear the story spoilers obviously but yeah I'm gonna do my best to try to make sense of this plot here okay so the reason you blit between areas with no rhyme or reason is because you're actually in a simulation kind of Sebastian Joseph Kidman Connolly every person you meet are all hooked up to a machine that combines their brains into a collective consciousness called stem the host is ruvik the game's villain since he's the host he's the only one with direct influence on what happens in this world kind of like a lucid dream but it's only lucid for ruvik and not lucid for anybody else that's why he can teleport and have crazy-ass demon powers all of us are contributing on some level for comparison's sake I'd say if you know how the world of Silent Hill 1 is a manifestation of a lesss consciousness and Silent Hill 2 is the same deal with james's that's pretty much the deal here it's a horrifying hell world created out of Rubik mind and as such every Monster location and apparition represents some part of his memory this place can be real it's like jumbled up memories Rubick spent his entire life researching this concept of hooking up rains to one another marcelo the doctor from earlier once worked together with Rubicon this but later stole his research and published it under his own name this made ruvik very very angry Rufus also had his own physical body freakin destroyed when he was a child he was playing in a barn with his sister when the angry village people burned it down to get revenge on their parents for being super rich and buying all the land or something like that ruvik sister dies horribly in the fire and ruvik barely escapes with his life that's why he's all scarred and burned up you learn all this by experiencing his memories firsthand trying to make me feel sorry for you and then at one point Marcelo had Rubik brain removed from his body to be used as a physical host for stem ruvik now existing only in this pseudo brain world recognizes Leslie the mental patient that Marcelo has been using in his experiments with stem as his ticket out Leslie essentially is the only patient that's been able to enter stem and come out alive because his brain while he's this mentally unstable patient dude he's perfect for stem for so essentially ruvik is trying to find Leslie in the pseudo brain world so he can transfer his consciousness into Leslie hence getting a brand new body to return to the physical world with it's actually hinted at the very end that he succeeds in doing this after the final battle Seb wakes up from stem walks outdoors and he sees Leslie walking away with a much different posture than he normally has anyway Sebastian kind of just gets caught up in all of this by simply responding to that one call at the beginning but that's just the story on the surface if you read a lot of the optional material it goes a lot deeper than that Seb has this whole backstory about his daughter Lily getting killed and his wife leaving him but he suspects that they were both taken by somebody alongside that there's this whole other story following Kidman in the DLC chapters that fleshes this behind-the-scenes stuff completely out I'll try to keep this short but essentially Julie Kidman was actually an undercover operative for a mysterious organization called Mobius they worked behind the scenes as Rubik and Marcelo created stem so they could swoop in and use the technology to link everybody's brains together and control the entire world you know they're the bigger bad creeping in the shadows that you don't even know about until you play with you'll see Kidman was sent in by Mobius to try and take Leslie out of stem she gradually realizes Mobius as true intentions and tries to kill Leslie knowing what both stem and ruvik need him for she also learns that Seb's wife Myra was also a member of Mobius which is why Sebastian ended up getting tangled in this whole mess it ends really open-ended Lea and based on the trailer the evil within to is going to try and tie up all those loose Red's so yeah that's the story I guess I think kinda maybe I don't know at least to my understanding of it anyway yeah I'm not gonna go like way too deep into it because this video would probably get way too long and I mean I can probably read into it on the evil within wiki or something like that but I'm also worried if I do that I'm just gonna find out that it is like this it is just as big messin to make sense I don't know things kind of fall into place it's interesting enough you know it's not like there's not many good writing or clever symbolism but whatever you know what it does have though hell yeah dude those Hollywood moments I'm a sucker for these call up Nathan Drake because the game cinematics are wild eye candy and I think that's why I often found myself not caring and I wasn't always really following the story super well because stylistically the game is very fun and very pleasing to look at and I mean it really does need that to make up for the writing and characters sebastian is as cookie cutter as you can get you know the hard-boiled detective with good intentions and a horrible drinking problem Wow never so huh don't even get me started on Leslie he is the most cliche ooh the crazy mental patient character you know rocking back and forth saying the same sentence over and over good lord it's lame we must be collectively losing our minds come on dude that's dumb however I did think Joseph managed to be a fairly interesting character at times throughout the game he fights off the urge to turn into one of the zombie dudes and then he says things like this you ever had the urge to just jump when you're on a high place or the subway rolls by imagine if you had that urge for him and hit straight then two minutes Joseph dude you're sunder wearing me UK man you're right you need to talk about this I really like that line say what you will about the writing but it does have its moments overall though when it comes to narrative the evil within is easily a style over substance kind of game so you may as well appreciate the style when you can I really liked the games lighting engine the prominent use of high contrast and pure black shadows and almost gives a game in noir feel which helps elevate the sense of mystery within the game's wildly convoluted plot I also feel the game has some solid pacing they break up the action and really nice waves giving you these nice set pieces to walk through between action scenes there's prominent use of elevators often in situations where you narrowly escaped a monster Sebastian even makes a joke about it near the end if I make it out alive I'm never riding in an elevator again and who could forget the iconic save rooms each one complete with the soothing sweet sound of clair de lune being played off a record player Oh hearing that in the distance is the sound of sweet sweet relief after all the tense confrontations hearing this song is always reassuring just for this game they added violin to it and honestly it sounds so good that whenever I hear just the regular piano version I now feel like something's missing I may as well talk about the deal see while I'm at it I mean other than giving you the majority of the story it also plays really differently there's three DLCs but we're just gonna talk about the two main story driven ones you play as Julie Kidman following her side of the story you'll even cross paths with Sebastian and relive parts the main game through her eyes and given prior events to each scenario and makes things really satisfying to watch with the added clarity Kidman story has much less focus on action in favor of a more modern approach you know with no weapons just sneaking and hiding I think you get to fire a gun like twice in the whole campaign it's alright I know it's not my preferred style of gameplay but I've seen a lot of others praised it for being a little different so whatever I do really like some of the unique monsters you'll encounter in her campaign like shade this weird lighthouse looking thing with these long elegant womanly legs it's so weird it gave me a lot of Silent Hill vibes it's super eerie and panic inducing when you see that beam of light wrapping around each corner as you try to avoid being seen by it but again the real appeal to this DLC is how it fleshes out the story and shows you the real behind the scenes villains mobius and it's definitely worth playing for at least that if you already liked the main game now of course the final thing I have to talk about is horror and like dude what's the point of this isn't a topic of discussion at one point so firstly I'm not gonna dance around this I'm just gonna give it to you straight the evil within is not a scary game maybe the DLC is a little bit but overall this game has never come close to scaring me I would say it's probably about the same scare wise as Resident Evil 4 at least the earliest chapters it's a horror themed game I mean there's corpses zombies you know all the spooky monsters and whatever but the game makes no attempt to whatsoever to add actually implement any clever horror gameplay scenes I feel like all of the games scares take place in cutscenes and well I rarely feel scared watching a horror movie yet games they've been able to terrify me it's because of the level of interactivity and the strong connection you have with the game when you're the one in control and you yourself look at something that wasn't there before it's pretty easy to get spooked but when you're just watching something it just isn't as effective you know it's like you're watching the experience of a camera guy rather than actually having the experience yourself the evil within completely waste the opportunity of being a part of this interactive medium and just never really tries unless you're scared of hiding in lockers and waiting for a chainsaw dudes not to find you I know that kind of anticipation does get to some people but even that direction doesn't last long but when it comes to the raw gameplay despite lacking in any good real horror I still really love this game it's one of my favorite games ever I think when it comes to the survival shooter genre it really hits the nail on the head every chapter offers something brand new without straying too far from the core gameplay you're not gonna find like a clever character study here which I do admit as something horror games tend to do better than any other genre but you will get a solid dumbass Hollywood adventure with some awesome gameplay I'm really looking forward to playing the sequel and I'll give that game a review to when it launches next month it really looks like they're ramping up focus on actually good scares and terrifying monster designs too as well as focusing on that behind the scenes story flushing it all out with Sebastian's wife and his daughter and Mobius tying it all together but yeah this games dirt cheap on all platforms now so I guess you really have no excuse to experience this Halloween season without the evil within [Music]

Channel: Nitro Rad

Views: 481,345

Rating: 4.9417596 out of 5

Keywords: the evil within, evil within, nitro rad, review, boxman, the keeper, ruvik, sebastian, the evil within 2, deep review, thorough review, the assignment, the consequence, james, funny, halloween special, horror, horror game, sscary, halloween, september, retrospective, shinji mikami, resident evil, silent hill, dead space

Id: MO3aglVMMYM

Length: 27min 35sec (1655 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/Pearcinator]

You should also check out this very in-depth analysis of The Evil Within by Chris Davis. He goes through the whole game and breaks it down explaining the good, the bad, the great and the downright terrible aspects.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vNLJvu0EB_Q