I'm Too Foolish For This Scary Game

I recently began playing this totally rad and cool game called The Evil Within 2, only to learn that the 2 was not a purely aesthetic affectation and there was in fact an Evil Within 1. Upon learning this i foolishly decided to seek out this context by embarking on what very quickly became a tedious nightmare trek through the vastly less good original. 

The Evil Within 1 is a mechanically uninspired copy of a copy of gameplay ideas that were overrated in 2004 when Resident Evil 4 did them, combined with a slapdash collection of every over-used horror game trope and setting imaginable, connected with about as much narrative cohesion as the paintings in Mario 64. 

Wait, maybe that's a bit cynical. Hold on, it got late. I'll rewrite this better in a bit... okay i did it. What you're seeing now is the less cynical version. So you can imagine how rude i was being before. Time to get right with Jesus. 

The story that attempts to flimsily hold these otherwise unconnected environments together is actually pretty unique and cool. It's basically about a crazy man who jacks people into his haunted house matrix or something. It's better fleshed out than that and takes itself seriously for the most part. Perhaps slightly too seriously since it's very obviously a plot of convenience. 

Setting the game in a scary matrix is a rather ingenuous way to fill it with all the weird and fun bits the developers can imagine without wasting too much time trying to justify it. It doesn't need to be too well thought out or work too hard to justify itself, which makes the clear attempt to do so worth mentioning.

They went the extra mile in conceptualizing how this wacky scenario came about and there's more than a few layers to what we see unfold. But it remains at it's core an inherently video-gamey idea, which makes the relative lack of levity a bit incongruous, in my professional bullshit opinion. 

These are among the many things the sequel drastically improves on. The second game has a more playful, self-aware tone, and its matrix world functions as a more cohesive explorable world, rather than a linear series of set pieces. Also they remembered to make the gameplay not total ass, which after playing the first game i deeply appreciate. 

If it were just a matter of being a carbon copy of RE4 gameplay wise that would be one thing, but the Evil Within 1 is RE4 mixed with every annoying gaming trend of the last decade as well. Crafting and skill trees and crafting and skill trees and more crafting and fucking goddamn skill trees. 

Don't even get me started on the boss fights. No. I'm serious. Do not get me fucking started on the miserable goddamn assey boss fights in this game. Yes. I said "assey". Let that be enough. 

Anyways that's my review of the game. Yes, i did play it to completion so there's gonna be a lot of these to look forward to, both for this one and the actually good sequel. Don't worry, it's all hilarious and cool. They haven't made a crappy game yet crappy enough for its crappiness to stop me, it only makes my crappy comedy more powerful.