The name Shinji Mikami is revered amongst fans of horror video games for good reason; he’s the brains behind Resident Evil and for all intents and purposes, the pioneer of the survival horror genre. While Mikami has made some respected games, none have had the cultural impact or commercial success as the Resident Evil franchise.
The influence of Resident Evil can bee seen in nearly every horror game to grace consoles since and with Resident Evil 4, Mikami reinvented the genre, and the franchise again but moving away from clunky controls and pre-rendered environments and moving the franchise into fully 3D modeled environments, thus paving the way for a more action oriented approach to the games. With that, the series he helped create, became far less about the horror and more about the action to the dismay of long time fans of the series.
After a couple of action that games far removed from Resident Evil, Mikami formed Tango Gameworks and began work on a horror game that promised to see him return to his survival horror roots.
The game is The Evil Within.
From the trailer, The Evil Within looks like one of the scariest games ever….unfortunately, it was just the trailer.
Initially, the trailer looked incredibly promising. Shot in live action; some truly gruesome images are flashed on the screen before a four-armed lady, with hair in her face immediately evoking Hideo Nakata’s creation Sadako from Ring, emerged from a pool of blood. It was enough to send any horror fan into a tizzy of excitement with the prospects of what Mikami was going to me bringing to next gen (at the time) consoles.
A few weeks prior to E3 2013, I was able to see a live demo of The Evil Within at a Bethesda Softworks event in Santa Monica. After a brief introduction by Mikami himself, a smallish group of representatives from gaming media outlets watched what turned out to be an incredibly rote, poorly acted demo of a game with some cool creature designs, but didn’t stick out in any way. What it did was evoke Resident Evil 4, and perhaps that was the intention, however, it’s been 8 years since Resident Evil 4 and while the game itself holds up, horror games have taken on a new life.
More and more independent studios are staking claim on the horror genre with games like Slender, Amnesia, Outlast and Daylight, while independent, have been offering gamers new ways to experience horror and do something not even Resident Evil managed to accomplish; be terrifying. Through use of sound, art design and the first person perspective, these games have managed to engage gamers (for the most part) in ways that few of the two previous generations horror games have been able to. There are notable exceptions like early Fatal Frame and Silent Hill games.
P.T. aka “Nope! The Game”
Speaking of Silent Hill, it’s well known at this point that Hideo Kojima and Guillermo Del Toro are working on a new game in the series called Silent Hills. Originally revealed as an “interactive teaser” during Sony’s Gamescom press conference, under the name P.T., dedicated players soon discovered that PT actually stood for “playable teaser” and that it was really an incredibly elaborate and inventive advertisement announcing the two respected artists new game.
Holy Jebus, it was terrifying. Attacking the player with minimal controls, a mind-bending loop of repetition and incredibly imagery and sound design it single handedly raises the bar for horror video games. That it was just a demo used for marketing purposes is even more mind-blowing and has me anxious to see what Kojima Productions has in store for the full game.
Aesthetically, The Evil Within is hitting all the right marks.
So here we are in a new era of horror centric games, and unfortunately, in my personal experience, The Evil Within seems to be antiquated in nearly every way in terms of design and horror. I have now seen 2 live demos of the game, and finally went hands on with the demo at the Gamestop Expo, and each and every time I have come away underwhelmed. It looks incredibly a lot like Resident Evil 4, and plays similarly as well. The notable exception is that the player controlled character, Sebastian can move will aiming, otherwise it’s almost the same experience. The regular enemies act and attack just like the Los Ganados, lunging and swinging knives and such.
In the first demo I witness Sebastian fortifying a room as the enemies piled into the windows in droves, just like the memorable set piece moment in Resident Evil 4. Creature designs do look good, especially on current gen hardware, but for me, I need something a bit more engaging than cool aesthetics. I want the game to be scary and so far, it just hasn’t been.
The Evil Within will definitely have its fans due to its “old-school” leanings, and I do hope that the final game wins me over next month when it finally releases. I just can’t shake the feeling that Mikami stuck a little too closely to what worked before without pushing the game to incorporate new ways to try and scare the audience.
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